Restless Roots

Navigating Conflict at the Portland Gardens

The Willamette River gently cuts through Portland, while Mt. Hood overlooks it from afar. Beside the city lies Forest Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States. With such deep roots in the natural world, I am curious to see how Portland tackles one of the intersections between humans and nature.

Stepping through the Nezu Gates at the mouth of Portland Japanese Garden, I am greeted by a rock garden next to a large wooden pavilion. It’s simple in its beauty — a sea of coarse white gravel surrounds two patches of grass shaped into the form of a sake cup and gourd. Evenly spaced lines follow the contours of each patch, emanating outward like waves in a still stone ocean.

Down a short hill is a small tea garden. At the entrance of the garden stands a hut-like structure, a waiting room for guests preparing to enter. A stone path makes its way through the garden, leading over a small stream and meandering through the landscape of delicate brush and mosses. The garden sits under perfect shade — it’s light enough to see the garden’s features but dark enough to instill a sense of calm isolation despite the swaths of tourists crowding the area. The path ends right before it leads into a confined teahouse that’s raised off the ground, but whose roof stands barely above eye level. The room is dark, yet inviting — a single dim light shines warmly over a hanging scroll of Chinese characters. Here, I could envision a tea master whisking matcha before handing me his tea bowl. I’m taken out of my trance by the swarm of people around me, reminding me that I am not a guest in a long forgotten mountain sanctuary, but rather someone who bought a 15 dollar ticket to a popular tourist attraction in one of America’s famous cities.

The Lan Su Garden in Old Town Chinatown is an entirely different experience. Whereas the Japanese garden is dark and subdued, Lan Su is bright and open. Here, water plays a central role; a small pond stands at the center of Lan Su, decorated with lotus and koi. The paved paths circle the pond, with small huts and willows providing shelter from the sun as one looks into the water or away at the trees and flowers which adorn the sides of the pathways. Once again, there’s a teahouse at one end of the garden, but it is large — and designed to be a commercial shop instead of ceremonial ground. 

The Japanese Garden and Lan Su are obviously meticulously crafted and maintained. Both gardens were built by scholars, architects, and gardeners from Japan and China. The Japanese Garden’s tea house was built entirely in Japan and brought to the United States in several pieces, and the builders of Lan Su used stones from Lake Tai in Suzhou. However, my sense of emptiness was undeniable after visiting Old Town Chinatown. Despite the careful attention paid to maintaining Chinese cultural authenticity, something was amiss. Where I expected a bustling community, I found a gate, a garden, and not much else.

Prior to World War II, Old Town Chinatown was in fact a Japantown. Following Japanese internment, it was laid to waste and later transformed into a Chinatown. However, by the time the district was finally developed, the increase in property prices led many of the Chinese residents to leave. Lan Su was built as part of a sister city partnership with Suzhou in the early 2000s to revitalize the district, but it seemed more like a small beacon in an empty sea.

The Japanese Garden was built throughout the 1960s to 1980s partially as an act of forgiveness for internment, and to heal Japanese-American relations. Today, it houses the Japan Institute which helps spread knowledge and awareness of Japanese art and culture. 

Knowing the histories of both gardens sends me deep in thought — clearly, there is a sustained effort by the people involved to maintain the authenticity of the experience provided by each garden, but this cannot change the contexts surrounding them. When I consider both, I am simultaneously enamored by the aesthetic qualities of the locations and disillusioned by their lack of integration into the surrounding communities. 

These emotions are irreconcilable, but are likely born from my own naivety. Admittedly, most things in the world are marred by a dark history. Every city in the U.S. has a past rife with racism and discrimination. The existence of this country as a whole lies on a foundation laid out by colonizers who massacred an entire people at first sight. 

For the Japanese Garden, there is a clear motivation not only to maintain the garden, but also to spread knowledge and interest in Japanese culture through the cultural center. Despite the lack of a Japanese cultural presence around it, that community had long disappeared by the time the garden was built. I feel that I can accept the history as is, and simply be thankful for the change in Portland’s cultural landscape today.

The same cannot be said about Lan Su. It was built in the already established Old Town Chinatown, but has done little for the surrounding community. As recently as five years ago, Chinese residents in Portland had to fight aggressive rebranding and renaming of the district. From a visitor’s perspective, stepping into Old Town Chinatown was a far cry from Chinatowns in San Francisco or New York City. Navigating my way through a bustling street with 50 open doors to different restaurants enticing me with innumerable variations on Chinese cuisine, countless banners flying over my head advertising something completely unknown to me — experiences I had come to expect from a Chinatown were nowhere to be found. While admittedly, Lan Su is a marvel for what they have accomplished within their walls, it may just be a diamond placed on a blanket of coals — a distraction from a community that the city has purged.

Words: Tushar Sondhi

Photos: Apollonia Cuneo