By Nina Huang
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
The Seattle Chinese Garden is getting ready for a historic expansion.
Jim Dawson, an architect and founding president of the Seattle Chinese Garden Society and its former board president, has been personally invested in the garden for decades.
Located on the South Seattle College campus, the mission is to showcase the rich heritage of Chinese arts and culture. Through the creation, operation, and maintenance of a Sichuan-style Chinese Garden, it serves as a bridge of friendship between the Seattle region and Chinese people around the world.
In 1985, Dawson and some family members visited China. He quickly came to realize that China was moving dramatically.
“Not a lot of people knew about China and it became clear to me that we needed to educate ourselves about Chinese culture,” Dawson said.
After he returned to Seattle from that trip, he started taking evening classes from a landscape architect from Beijing at the University of Washington. There were a number of City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation employees who shared that they were in discussions with the city of Chongqing about the possibility of building a classical Chinese garden.
During their visit in 2024, Dawson and others met with the mayor of Chongqing at a local Starbucks coffee shop. They even created a unique drink for this meeting called the Hot Pike—a nod to Chongqing hot pot and Seattle’s Pike Place Market. It was an iced drink that combined Chongqing green tea and Pike Place coffee beans, which Dawson said was very delicious.
Dawson, Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss, former Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo, along with the Seattle Chinese Garden board members, spent the whole 30-minute meeting discussing the garden with the mayor of Chongqing. It was a productive meeting where the mayor committed to the same in-kind support he had provided for the Songmei Pavilion and courtyard—such as the fabrication of building components and sending over artisans to put the buildings together, and more. This expansion project is going to be much bigger than those previous efforts.
“We are currently valuing [Chongqing’s] contribution as approximately $8.5 million,” Dawson said. That is in addition to the $5 million the City of Seattle has committed in its current budget.
However, the city’s official commitment to this contribution will come only after the garden raises a significant portion of the local funds necessary to complete this phase of the project.
Dawson said they are preparing to launch a fundraising campaign in June.
“We did not receive funding from the Washington State legislature in the current session, but we will try again next year. This was a tough year to apply because of the revenue shortfalls,” Dawson said.
Despite navigating COVID-19 and tensions between the two countries, Chongqing reiterated their support for the expansion of the garden.
“If the fundraising campaign goes really well, we think there may be a possibility to finish these together. I think people will be so excited by what they see. This is going to be a major world-class Chinese garden once this phase gets finished. There’s so much excitement that there’s going to be a hard push to do the final phase,” Dawson said.
The Seattle Chinese Garden will inspire global understanding by immersing visitors in Chinese culture. It will be a dynamic, thriving community space that welcomes local, regional, and international visitors to explore the richness of Chinese culture. Through this lens, the garden will offer a new perspective on our Chinese neighbors, the global community, and ourselves.
The garden aims to provide an experience that captivates the senses and engages the heart and mind.
The proposed Central Garden portion will be very big. It will include multiple courtyards, buildings, and small pavilions; a teahouse, an entire water system, a lotus pond, a stream, a large lake, and a four-story floating cloud pavilion. It will become the symbol of the garden, which really symbolizes the connection between the two cities, Dawson said.
Finalizing the design and permitting would take about a year and then in mid-2026, they can begin the site work.
By 2027, the teams from China would come over to erect the buildings and the target date for completion of this phase for the Central Garden is summer of 2028.
The final phase would be the large Gathering Together hall intended to host banquets and performances, as well as the administration complex for the offices, gift shop, and library.
Dawson said that the timeline is to complete the garden in 2030, which is aggressive, but it’s important to be aggressive.
“We think this is maybe the most important time in our nation’s history to support this kind of cultural understanding through this garden, so we’re very focused on getting it accomplished as is Chongqing,” Dawson said.
“The Chinese population has grown dramatically in the last 20 years. There’s a lot of xenophobia and hate crimes that we’ve seen and a lot of tensions. It’s never been a more important time ever to do this,” Dawson said.
Dawson shared that in the past two years, the garden has hosted the Astra Lumina event, which attracted over 100,000 visitors.
“For many of them, it’s their first visit [to the garden], and it’s an eye opener. It’s given us a lot of momentum to get more volunteers and people coming forth,” he said.
Dawson has been continuously and deeply involved since the beginning. He has been the board president several times. He’s visited Chongqing at least 25 times on behalf of the garden. While he’s not a landscape architect, Dawson has been working closely with the design team in China since the very beginning.
There was little known about Chinese gardens and the team involved designers from all over China to brainstorm what the Seattle Chinese Garden would look like. They spent months traveling through the Sichuan province, documenting classical gardens. Dawson said that there was very little documentation available, far less than what you would find in the Soochow or Yangtze River areas. It was a learning process for everyone.
Dawson said that they’re working with a local architecture firm, Jones & Jones Architects.
Former Seattle City Councilmember Tanya Woo has a lot of connections and ties to the garden. She’s been invited to perform several times with her wushu and dance groups. She also visited Chongqing last year to meet people and develop stronger connections.
Woo shared that it’s a beautiful space and a great connection to Chinese cultural heritage. Her parents and relatives enjoy visiting.
“It’s just a serene place and it’d be really exciting to have a completed garden. It’s always so busy when I’ve been there,” she said.
“One of the cool things about being at the garden is that the people who go there are so diverse. It’s amazing to see so many people interested in Chinese culture, the gardens, and seeing how excited kids get running around. It’s something we hope to build upon and hope that it’ll continue to forge connections across the sea for many, many years and inspire the next generations,” Woo said.
Woo went on the trip to lead the delegation to strengthen Seattle’s relationship and ties with the Chinese cities, as well as to share ideas around climate change. She also visited Shenzhen and Hong Kong during the same trip.
Seattle has about 20 sister cities and agreements with other cities to visit and help strengthen those ties.
“It was a really great trip to learn more about how to work together on a global goal and to keep the conversation going,” she said.
Woo remembered how her father, who passed away when she was 16, was part of the original group to get the garden started. She recalled seeing flyers about their fundraising efforts as a child, and to be able to reconnect and see the garden now, is a personal connection for her to remember her father’s efforts.
“Being there is a connection to him in a way, as well as a connection to our cultural heritage and educating the next generation,” Woo said.
Nina can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.
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