Spectacle, Ritual, and Social Relations: The Son of Heaven, Citizens, and Created Space in Imperial Gardens in the Northern Song Stephen H. West There were three major types of gardens in Bianliang  (modern Kaifeng ), the capital of the Northern Song (960–1125 A.D.): imperial parks, monastery and temple grounds, and private gardens. A recent article lists the names of nearly eighty gardens in and around the city and asserts that there were probably hundreds more. 1 Numbered among these enclosures were four imperial parks located at each of the cardinal gates. A fifth, the notorious Genyue, which was situated next to the Forbidden City (the “Grand Interior”), was constructed as a private miniature of the empire, a botanical and zoological collection of exotica from all parts of China, the rapacious collection of which drove the state into moral and financial bankruptcy. 2 All of the parks, except for the Genyue, were open for use by officials and the court at set times of the year or on special occasions, and one major site, a complex on the western side of the capital, was open for six weeks a year to the general populace. In a practical sense, imperial parks also served as truck gardens, stables, zoos, and a variety of other purposes. Most important, gardens were an important social space for people: they were toured for flower viewing, were sites of banquets and drinking parties, and for writers they pro- vided the necessary context and stimulus for the creation of poetry and prose that cel- ebrated the passage of the seasons and the fellowship of humans amid change. But, for ordinary people, it was the opening of the parks to all and the concurrent staging of imperial spectacle that figured most significantly in their lives. For common folk of the capital, festivals set in gardens ranked with religious or imperial rituals in terms of their importance, and people were inclined to treat all of these occasions alike—not as sacred events or humbling moments of awe before imperial majesty, but as nodal points of the urban year that were enhanced by sensuous and material pleasures: entertainment, food, 1 Liu Yi’an= , “Bei Song Kaifeng yuanyuan de kaocha” !"#$%&, Songshi lunji   (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou shushe, 1984). 2 See James Hargett, “Huizong’s Magic Marchmount:The Genyue Pleasure Park of Kaifeng,” Monumenta Serica 38 (Fall, 1990), 1–49 for a description of the park.