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I'm now going to look at a brief history of the term, landscape, 

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 was still in the conceptual framework. 

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Let's look at the word landscape itself. 

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I know it's very much a Western word. 

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And this explains why 

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the word comes from old German, 

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landskipe or landscaef, 

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also landscap and landschaft. 

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German settlers took the word to England in about 500 AD, 

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and eventually it became landscape few hundred years later. 

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Originally, it meant a clearing in the forest 

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where the small farms with animals and people 

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who sent essentially a peasant landscape. 

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So, 

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the term cultural landscape has always meant 

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it is associated with people. 

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In Latin, it comes from the Latin word Pagus, 

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and the French word pays and paysage, 

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comes from this, 

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campagne deriving from champagne, 

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meaning a countryside of fields. 

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Cultural in furs inhabited active being linked to 

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the Latin word colere or culture, 

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which means to inhabit, to cultivate, 

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not just by farming, 

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but to cultivate mentally as well, 

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to protect, to honor. 

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From this idea, 

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all these ideas came that German word Kulturlandschaft , 

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which you see here. 

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What to draw your attention to these three descriptions, 

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if you like, of landscape. 

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J.B. Jackson, 

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who was writing in the 1960s and 70s in America. 

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He said the old landscape, the old fashioned, 

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but rather surprisingly persistent definition of a landscape, 

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is a portion of the earth's surface 

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that can be comprehended at a glance. 

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Look at it,

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 you start to understand what you see. 

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He also said

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 a rich and beautiful book is always open before us, 

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we have but to learn to read it. 

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And we talk of reading the landscape, 

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looking at it, 

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reading it, 

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and understanding it. 

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W. G. Hoskins, an English historian, 

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he asserted the significance of landscape in his book, 

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The Making of the English Landscape, 

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with the proposal that the landscape itself, 

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to those who know how to read it aright 

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is the richest historical record we possess. 

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David Lowenthal, and this is my favorite. 

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He said it is the landscape as a whole - 

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that largely man-made tapestry, 

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in which all other artifacts are embedded, 

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which gives them their sense of place. 

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It's the landscape in which everything here, 

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 which gives them their overall sense of place. 

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Now there are equally Chinese definitions of landscape. 

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And I would urge you to go to the books and look at them, 

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and you will see similarities to this sort of description. 

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What they were all contending, 

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these three authors? 

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From the modern foundation for landscape study, 

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this is where landscape is not looked on simply 

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as a pretty picture or as a static text. 

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Rather, it's the expression of landscape as cultural process. 

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The connections, therefore between

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 landscape identity and hence memory 

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thought a comprehension, 

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a fundamental to understanding 

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landscape and the human sense of place. 

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People see and make landscapes as a result of 

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their shared system of beliefs and ideologies. 

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In this way, landscape is a cultural construct, 

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a mirror of our memories and myths 

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encoded with meanings 

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which can be read and interpreted. 

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Landscape, therefore, 

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is defined by our vision, 

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but interpreted by our minds. 

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We look and then we start to interpret what we see. 

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And this is one of the fascinating things about landscape study. 

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Another way of seeing landscape 

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is through paintings, 

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both in western and eastern cultures. 

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And Western art, 

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since the Renaissance, 

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the 17th century 

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has focused substantially on the train landscape reality. 

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You see these dutch paintings here, 

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here, right there painting actual landscapes, 

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those landscapes existed. 

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They were ordinary, everyday landscapes. 

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This one painted by this French, Claude Lorrain, 

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very famous, 

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17th century landscape painter. 

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He painted landscapes in Italy. 

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And these paintings, 

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along with writings, 

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spurred the English to go to Europe, 

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or what was known as the ground tour to see these places. 

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This would have been topographical correct. 

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Then in this landscape, 

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he puts people, 

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and animals, 

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both mythical people and real people. 

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Then in the middle ground, usually water, 

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and then some ancient ruins and buildings, 

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then in the background, sublime nature. 

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Now these places did exist. 

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They didn't look like that. 

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But these pages turned these landscapes 

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into what we call a picturesque, 

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the idea of landscape, 

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and people like them. 

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So in England, 

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people 50 years later 

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started to turn their estates to look like this, 

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the big parks, the 18th century parks of England. 

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You have two Chinese pictures, 

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I have to say, I have to admit, 

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this is my favorite landscape painting in the world. 

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I think it's one of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen. 

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The last time I saw the original in the museum 

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at Shanghai a few years ago, 

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when there was a display of Chinese landscape paintings. 

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And you knew where it was, 

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because the crowds were six deep trying to look at it. 

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It's only small on silk, 

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and it's a scholar 

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in his garden viewing plum blossom by moonlight. 

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Here is this individual interaction with the landscape. 

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So in contrast, Eastern landscape art has 

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also focused more on imaginary landscapes, 

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that this is imagine. 

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Scholars did have gardens. 

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So in effect in Chinese art and literature, 

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what you have is a deconstruction of material nature 

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which expressed its spiritual side. 

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Appearances became less important. 

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And paintings became more abstract and symbolic. 

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So Chinese depictions of nature cultivated landscapes, 

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not farmer cultivated, 

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they looked on as being part of your cultural memory. 

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There were expressions of the mind and the heart 

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rather than the real world. 

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And proceeded in this one. 

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It's a real scene, 

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but this fantastic rendition of the studying Chinese landscape, 

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and it reflects the hauntingly beautiful shapes 

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seen in Chinese landscapes. 

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Why do this landscape? 

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Here's a boat, 

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and it's brought a group of people 

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and they're walking through this landscape up to a refuge up here. 

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So there are interacting with the landscape, 

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being in the landscape and enjoying it. 

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Despite of the differences, 

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I think there's a similarity between both landscape art forms, 

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Eastern and Western. 

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Both art forms represent subjective notions of an ideal, 

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perhaps elusive nature, 

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and  we  see landscape.