Yangxian Xishan: Return to Mind Freedom

"Let people come here to immerse themselves with the environment, forget about the society, and return to pure natural self. We may roll on the grass, lie down in this place and may be in a daze, which are the states I want."

—— Mr. Ma Xiaowei

Mr. Ma Xiaowei —— Chief Designer of Yangxian Xishan Landscape, Founder and President of Ager Group, Visiting Professor of Tsinghua University Seminar, and Director of Architecture and Landscape Design School, University of Minnesota, USA.

Design representative works: Jianzhou Memorial Poetry Park in St. Paul Minnesota, Sina Plaza in downtown San Francisco, and series projects for BFA.

Q: We know you are a Beijinger and went to the United States. Are you living in the United States now?

Mr. Ma Xiaowei:

I went to the United States in my 20s and stayed there for 12 years. After that, I went back to Shanghai and have been in Shanghai for 18 years. For now, half of my time is in Shanghai and half in Boston.

Q: You have both been at home and abroad for a long time, and have been to many places. What is the ideal living environment in your heart?

Mr. Ma Xiaowei:

If one place could provide all the conveniences of modern life and bring us close to nature, this is the best living environment.

This place is also the most valuable in the United States and many other countries. Like Boston, where I live, the most expensive house is the first row of downtown waterfront, and the second most expensive is suburb.

After more than a decade of urbanization in China, everyone is already familiar with the city environment, but the result of urbanization is the traffic congestion as well as the lack of exercise space, contact with nature and individuality.

Therefore, we are in a new movement after nearly 20 years of urbanization, which can be defined as the new suburbanization of China. That is to say, people are beginning to return to nature again to find a place on the edge of the city, with convenient infrastructure and close to nature.

Q: Based on this understanding, how do you think about Yangxian Xishan?

Mr. Ma Xiaowei:

This is a very unique land along with mountains and water. What the Chinese natural aesthetic actually does is to link the limited life of the individual to the infinite nature to achieve a transformation from finite to infinite, that is, eternal life. Westerners pursue eternal life by relying on God. Chinese people are not. What Chinese want is to achieve eternal life through relation with mountains and rivers. Therefore, all the emotions of the Chinese people, and even all the beliefs in China, are landscapes. We look at the things of ancient times, paintings, poems, and gardens. All of them are mountains and rivers.

Therefore, when I first came to Yangxian Xishan, I felt that it was a particularly ideal living environment. Because it is close to the city, the surrounding facilities are convenient, but the landscape is so complete and so unique, this is too attractive.

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