Realms of aesthetic experience of classical Chinese gardens based on semantic analysis of online tourism reviews

Abstract

The study of classical Chinese garden aesthetics has yielded long-term and extensive insights through the lens of traditional Chinese landscape design theory. However, little attention has been paid to the empirical investigation of the transition pattern between different realms of aesthetic experience using quantitative methods. This research selected seven classical Chinese gardens in southeast China as research cases and analyzed 12,864 online reviews on Ctrip, an online travel agency in China, as the data sources. Garden aesthetic elements were measured using natural language processing and encoding technology. A probability transition model of the realms of aesthetic experience was constructed based on a Markov chain and used to mine the transition pattern of the aesthetic realms. The novel mixed approach of big data mining and the modeling of aesthetic realms enriched the knowledge of aesthetic experience and provided a new research paradigm for the experiences of cultural heritage by tourists.

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Background

In 1997, the “Classical Gardens of Suzhou” (苏州园林) was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List as masterpieces of the genre of classical Chinese garden design (https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/813). These gardens, which flourished in the East Yangtze Delta region from the 11^th to 19^th centuries, showcase the remarkable achievements of Chinese social, cultural, and craftsmanship practices within their philosophical background. Based on the Chinese philosophy of the “harmony of humans and nature(天人合一)”, classical Chinese gardens epitomize this ideal through their design elements (Yu et al. 2021; Zhang et al. 2021). These classical Chinese gardens serve a dual purpose; besides their practical use as outdoor living spaces, they also possess a spiritual dimension, providing aesthetic and contemplative pleasure that cultivates the spirit (Li 2015).

In essence, art is the process of materializing images and conveying aesthetic experience (De Bolla 2002). Research on aesthetic experiences has received substantial interest from diverse scientific disciplines (Brachmann and Redies 2017) and recently has enjoyed rapid growth in empirical studies (Mastandrea et al. 2021). However, different art forms express aesthetic perception using various mediums, differing in their processes of aesthetic expression. As a unique art form, gardening art consciously condenses natural landscapes through an organic combination of architecture, plants, rocks, and bodies of water. It evokes the subjective emotions of aesthetic subjects through sensory information, stimulates complex aesthetic experiences through philosophical imagination and visitors’ emotions, and ultimately enables visitors to attain spiritual resonance and detachment (Li 2015; Xu and Zhao 2019; Zhang et al. 2021). Compared with other art forms, the psychological connection between the design vocabulary of gardening art and subjective aesthetic experience is implicit and veiled, resulting in the aesthetics of gardening art possessing the characteristics of symbolism and ambiguity (Xu and Zhao 2019).

Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China, numerous scholars have conducted research on the aesthetics of classical Chinese gardens from different perspectives. Classical Chinese garden designers and literati, such as Ji Cheng (Ji 2012), Li Yu (Li 2018), and Wen Zhenheng (Wen 2010), have systematically summarized the theory of traditional gardening art. However, they have rarely discussed the aesthetic experience and psychological process of visitors, focusing primarily on the construction process and artistic characteristics of classical Chinese gardens (Yun and Kim 2019). More recently, Chinese researchers in the 20^th century have elaborated on the aesthetics of classical Chinese gardens by integrating contemporary aesthetic theory with traditional Chinese philosophy (Rinaldi 2012). Such aesthetic research concentrates on the association between classical Chinese gardening art and the broader context of Chinese history, religion, and literature (Rinaldi 2012). The interpretation of the essence of garden aesthetics is relatively vague and obscured, and there is a dearth of unified opinion on the variety of aesthetic experiences and their transition process in the existing literature (Xu and Zhao 2019). There is also very little empirical quantitative analysis (Zhang and Xu 2020). At the same time, because traditional gardening art theory was developed based on the perspective of ancient Chinese literati, aesthetic preferences and experiences could substantially be different from those of modern people (Keswick 2003).

With the development of mobile technology and social media, people have been accustomed to sharing their real-time experiences of tourist destinations on social networks and travel websites. Online travel reviews contain a large amount of authentic and credible information on visitors’ aesthetic perceptions (Koblet and Purves 2020), which reflects the inherent collective unconscious and presents a universal cognitive structure of tourists’ aesthetic experiences (Alaei et al. 2019; Bui et al. 2022). Compared with traditional questionnaire surveys and interviews, the data from online travel reviews has the advantages of large sample size and truthfulness and thus has attracted increasing attention from researchers (Lyu et al. 2022; Li et al. 2018; Li et al. 2020). Based on data from online travel reviews, hybrid research methods such as natural language processing technology, content analysis, quantitative statistical analysis, and qualitative analysis methods have been widely used to explore the tourists’ experience of tourism destinations, and fruitful research results have been achieved in recent years (Liang et al. 2021). Existing research has covered a variety of tourism topics, including farm tourism experiences (Capriello et al. 2013), cruiser tourism (Tao and Kim 2019), wildlife tourism (Shang and Luo 2022), island tourism (Ge 2020), and polar tourism (Cai et al. 2020). The research methods adopted in these studies mainly include word frequency analysis, semantic network analysis (Tao and Kim 2019), sentiment analysis (Alaei et al. 2019), linear discriminant analysis (Shang and Luo 2022), term frequency-inverse document frequency (Xu et al. 2019), manual coding (Cai et al. 2020), and semantic analysis (Capriello et al. 2013). These studies make up for the limitations of existing research including the small sample sizes of questionnaires and in-depth interviews and the inability to reflect changes in tourists’ psychological states.

Although online travel reviews from tourism websites contain a great amount of visitors’ authentic aesthetic experiences, existing research mainly focuses on emotional attitudes and satisfaction regarding tourism destinations from the tourists’ perspective. There are still few studies on the aesthetic experiences of cultural tourism sites (Dai et al. 2019). Specifically, current research lacks sophisticated quantitative methods to describe tourists’ aesthetic perceptions based on online reviews, and the dynamic transition process of aesthetic cognitive stages remains largely unexplored (Bui et al. 2022, Leder and Nadal 2014).

Therefore, studying the framework of classical Chinese garden aesthetic experiences holds research significance for landscape architecture aesthetic theories in terms of both contemporary practices and the inheritance of classical Chinese gardening art. Thus, it is essential to further explore the realms of aesthetic experience and the framework of the transition process by integrating contemporary multidisciplinary aesthetics theories and employing more rigorous research approaches (Sánchez 2022; Fudge 2001; Leder and Nadal 2014).

This study collected the online reviews of seven Suzhou (苏州) classical gardens from the tourism website Ctrip. By combing the content of the aesthetic theoretical framework in the classic research literature of classical Chinese gardens, we used manual coding methods and text pattern matching techniques to quantify the aesthetic realms of gardens. We also used a Markov chain model to calculate the transition probability between different aesthetic realms to reflect the dynamic change pattern in tourists’ aesthetic psychology. This approach helped us reveal the internal framework of the transition process between different realms of aesthetic experience of Chinese gardens in the East Yangtze Delta region.

This study aimed to answer the following questions:

How can we classify realms of aesthetic experience from the perspective of tourists’ experiences in classical Chinese gardens?

What is the framework of the transition process among these realms of aesthetic experience?

What is the commonness and/or distinctiveness in the transition process, if it exists, among different classical Chinese gardens? How is distinctiveness in the transition process potentially related to distinct design features?

To answer these questions, this study employed a theoretical framework model of aesthetic experience based on existing literature on classical Chinese gardens and implements the artificial intelligence data mining model and the Markov chain method to investigate the transition process of aesthetic realms based on tourists’ reviews of seven classical Chinese gardens on tourism websites. This quantitative–qualitative mixed approach provides a theoretical reference for the inheritance and development of classical Chinese gardening art by developing a rigorous and repeatable innovative research path for the exploration of the aesthetic experience in contemporary social and cultural background.

Framework

Theoretical framework

The concept of “aesthetic experience” is central to traditional Chinese aesthetics. Researchers argue that the creation of an aesthetic experience can transform objective entities, such as garden landscapes, into projections and materializations of the artist’s emotions. The peak of this experience occurs when the observer experiences abrupt and profound enlightenment, integrating artist’s deepest emotions with the essence of the natural cosmos (Zong 1994), ultimately leading to “a realm of spiritual illumination” (Han 2004).

In Art as Experience, Dewey (2008) posited that aesthetic experience could possesses a “temporal structure” that develops and acquires specific qualities as it progresses towards its ultimate realm, making it “dynamic because of taking time to complete.” Zong Baihua, a scholar of Chinese aesthetics, similarly argued that aesthetic experience could involve a deep, multifaceted, and hierarchical process. Dewey further suggested that aesthetic experience must accumulate across different phases: later phases build upon and advance earlier ones rather than merely succeeding them mechanically. Consequently, aesthetic experience can only be thoroughly examined within a “process-oriented framework” (Brincker 2015), necessitating an analysis of the characteristics and transitions among its various phases.

A large number of researchers have investigated the complex psychological processes involving in experiencing classical Chinese gardens, discussing the specific definitions of realms within aesthetic experiences. Zong proposed a three-realm framework, which includes “the imitation of perceptual forms, the conveyance of vibrant life, and the revelation of the highest spiritual realm”. Similarly, Ye (2013) advanced a three-realm theory of aesthetic experience specific to classical Chinese gardens. The first realm is “aesthetic perception” (美感的感知), which is the “objective description” or “sense perception” of all the landscape sensory inputs; the second realm is “emotional touch” (情意之感动), that is, the so-called subjective emotional experience; and the third realm is the “taste of aesthetic perception” (感发之意趣), which is the spiritual touch triggered by the aesthetic experience. Similarly, Jin (2005) divides the aesthetic psychological realm of garden appreciation into four segments including “labor-shaped and comfortable” (劳形舒体), “pleasing to the eye” (悦目赏心), “emotional association” (因情迁想), and “spiritual mood” (惬志怡神).

Based on the existing literature, we can assert that the aesthetics of classical Chinese gardens begin with the sensory perception of “objects”, such as rocks, plants, and bodies of water, which attract the subject’s attention and elicit intuitive cognition, leading to strong aesthetic experiences. The perception of landscape features, influenced by personal cultural background and aesthetic cultivation, stimulates rich emotions, aided by imaginary association, which extends the dimension of aesthetic experience and ultimately offers spiritual enjoyment. Based on literature (Jin 2005; Keswick 2003; Wen 2010; Ye 2013), this study classified the process of the aesthetic experience of classical Chinese gardens into four realms: “aesthetic object” (AO, 审美物象), “aesthetic perception” (AP, 审美感知), “aesthetic association” (AA, 审美联想), and “spiritual mood” (SM, 惬志怡神).

Realms of the aesthetic experience of classical Chinese gardens

Realm I: Aesthetic object(AO)

The “aesthetic object” realm refers to the specific content perceived by human senses, which is the starting point of aesthetic experience. The content includes the basic design elements of classical Chinese gardens. In his influential book Chronicle of Jiangnan (Southeast) Gardens (江南园林志), Mr. Tong Yu summarized these objects as four categories: “hills,” “water,” “flowers and trees,” and “architecture” (Tong 1984). In addition, the plaques, couplets, inscriptions, calligraphy, and painting displays in the garden also play an irreplaceable role in expressing the aesthetic of classical Chinese gardens. Therefore, it is necessary to discuss them as a separate category of AO. Besides the abovementioned material entities, other sensory elements such as sounds and smells also have an important effect on people’s aesthetic experience (Heyd 2001). To sum up, this study classified the content of the AO realm into six categories: “hill and rocks,” “waterbody,” “architecture,” “plants,” “couplets,” and “others.”

Realm II: Aesthetic perception(AP)

The realm of “aesthetic perception” refers to the people’s direct perception of the “aesthetic object” of gardens. This stage is considered as the first step in forming an aesthetic experience in contemporary studies (Leder and Nadal 2014; Zhang and Xu 2020). It includes a variety of spontaneous emotions and experiences generated by the objective entities, including 1) direct sensory experience from entities, such as experiencing the pleasant sight of flowers through visual observation and the sound of falling water through auditory perception; 2) direct cognitive experience obtained from AOs without the help of imagination, such as the orderliness of the space and the elegance of the design details; and 3) strong intuitive emotions aroused by AOs, such as the pleasant mood evoked by the fragrance of flowers and pleasure from walking through the continuous spaces.

Realm III: Aesthetic association(AA)

The realm of “aesthetic association” refers to the stage where tourists extend and recreate cognitive images of the garden through association and imagination based on perceptions. This realm acts as a key stage in enriching the aesthetic experience of classical Chinese gardens (Fudge 2001). On the one hand, this realm relies on the induction of attractive garden landscapes; on the other hand, it is closely related to personal life experience and cultural context. Therefore, aesthetic association can include a wide variety of contents, including reflection of specific eras and resonance in a specific cultural context.

Realm IV: Spiritual mood(SM)

The realm of “spiritual mood” refers to the cognitive stage of “egolessness(无我),” in which people reach an intimate state of resonating with the aesthetics of the environment by concentrating their minds and freeing their thoughts, thus becoming oblivious to the outside world and their own selves (Keswick 2003). It is the ultimate realm of classical garden aesthetics, which is different from the intuitive pleasure based on direct sensory stimulation but is the spiritual pleasure formed by abstract thinking.

Methods

Study cases

We selected seven classical gardens from the World Cultural Heritage List for this study: Humble Administrator’s Garden (拙政园), Lingering Garden (留园), Master-of-Nets Garden (网师园), Garden of Cultivation (艺圃), Lion Grove Garden (狮子林), Ouyuan Garden (耦园) and Geyuan Garden (个园). These gardens are the exemplary representative of Jiangnan Classical Gardens.

Data

Data source

This study employed the Python Selenium package to crawl the reviews of the above gardens published before Nov. 24, 2021, from Ctrip(https://www.ctrip.com/), a famous online travel agency in China and has the biggest market share of all online travel agencies in China. The Selenium package is an automated tool for web page testing, which can simulate the way people browse web pages to automatically extract the data of online travel reviews on tourism destinations and analyze the logical structure. Reviews were excluded if they were duplicates, overly brief or containing only generic information, lacking references to aesthetic experience, or unrelated to tourists’ experiences, such as those with emojis, consecutive identical punctuation marks or words, or advertisements, such as garden introductions. A total of 12864 reviews were retained for further data analysis (Table 1).

Table 1. Number of reviews of each garden from Ctrip.

Gardens	Review number	Valid review number	Percentage
Lingering Garden	2742	2306	84.1%
Ouyuan Garden	804	677	84.2%
Master-of-Nets Garden	2608	2201	84.4%
Lion Grove Garden	2771	2453	88.5%
Garden of Cultivation	307	279	90.8%
Humble Administrator’s Garden	2786	2393	85.9%
Geyuan Garden	2953	2555	86.5%
Total	14971	12864	85.9%

Text semantic analysis

The accurate model of Jieba (Chinese word segmentation API in Python programming language) was used to perform word segmentation on online reviews of gardens. Before word segmentation, a Stopword word bank and a self-defined word bank were constructed in the context of this study to delete punctuation, numbers, and some functional words with no relation to the research content in this study to avoid idioms or collocations with special meaning in the context of garden aesthetics, being mistakenly segmented. The results of word segmentation of all reviews were sorted by word frequency in descending order. The words were manually encoded into four realms: AO, AP, AA, and SM. AO are classified into six categories: “hill and rocks,” “waterbody,” “architecture,” “plants,” “couplets,” and “others.” In this way, we constructed corresponding word banks for each aesthetic realm. We established the statistic of word frequency to calculate the dimension index of each aesthetic realm by matching the words in reviews with the word banks for each aesthetic realm.

Probability transition model of aesthetic realms

To mine the potential transition pattern of aesthetic realms of tourists during the aesthetic process of Jiangnan Gardens in China, we constructed a model of probability transitions among various aesthetic realms.

Overall probability transition model
This study explored the overall probability transition models of four aesthetic realms and defined one-, two-, and three-step probability transition models. The one-step probability transition model was defined using Eq. (1).
1
$\begin{matrix} P (x - > y) = \frac{P (x_{index} > 0 \cap y_{i n d e x} > 0) \cap P (z_{i n d e x} = 0)}{P (x_{index} > 0)} \\ (1 < = x < y < = 4, x \neq y \neq z, 1 < = z < = 4) \end{matrix}$ where x, y, and z denote the aesthetic realm with values of integers in [1, 4] where 1, 2, 3, and 4 denote AO, AP, AA, and SM, respectively. Equation (1) denotes that only two aesthetic realms occur in reviews without containing any words encoded to the third aesthetic realm. Because aesthetic realms transit from bottom to top based on their characteristics of evolution, there are six evolution patterns of aesthetic realms in the one-step transition model: P(AO- > AP), P(AO- > AA), P(AO- > SM), P(AP- > AA), P(AP- > SM), and P(AA- > SM).
The two-step transition probability model was defined using Eq. (2).
2
$\begin{matrix} P (x - > y - > z) = \frac{P (x_{i n d e x} > 0 \cap y_{i n d e x} > 0 \cap z_{i n d e x} > 0) \cap P (w_{i n d e x} = 0)}{P (x_{i n d e x} > 0)} \\ (1 < = x < y < z < = 4, x \neq y \neq z \neq w, 1 < = w < = 4) \end{matrix}$
Equation (2) shows that tourists described only three types of aesthetic realms in their reviews and have four types of evolution patterns: P(AO- > AP- > AA), P(AP- > AA- > SM), P(AO- > AP- > SM), and P(AO- > AA- > SM).
The three-step probability transition model was defined using Eq. (3).
3
$P (AO \to AP \to AA \to SM) = \frac{P (A P_{i n d e x} > 0 \cap A A_{i n d e x} > 0 \cap S M_{i n d e x} > 0)}{P (A O_{i n d e x} > 0)}$
Aesthetic realm transition model based on object segmentation

Although the transition of aesthetic realms is related to cultural backgrounds and the peculiar nature of visitors, the basis of transition is still the perception of objects in gardens. This study designed the corresponding pattern evolution models of aesthetic realm transition probability aiming at single-object elements and two-object combinations.

The one-step transition probability model of the aesthetic realm of a single object was defined using Eq. (4).

\begin{matrix} P (A O_{i} \to x) = \frac{P (A O_{i}^{i n d e x} > 0 \cap x_{i n d e x} > 0) \cap P (y_{i n d e x} = 0)}{P (A O_{i}^{i n d e x} > 0)} \\ (x, y \in [A P, A A, S M], x \neq y, 0 < i < 7) \end{matrix}

where I_i denotes the i^th gardening element in the object aesthetic realm and i has the values of integers. Integers 1–6 denote “hill and rocks,” “waterbody,” “architecture,” “plants,” “couplets,” and “other,” respectively.

The one-step probability transition model of aesthetic realms of two-object combinations was defined using Eq. (5).

\begin{matrix} P (A O_{i, j} \to x) = \frac{P (A O_{i}^{i n d e x} > 0 \cap A O_{j}^{i n d e x} \cap x_{i n d e x} > 0) \cap P (y_{i n d e x} = 0)}{P (A O_{i}^{i n d e x} > 0 \cap A O_{j}^{i n d e x})} \\ (x, y \in [A P, A A, S M], x \neq y, 0 < i, j < 7, i \neq j) \end{matrix}

where i and j denote two types of objects in aesthetic realms, and x or y denotes AP, AA, or SM where y is higher than x in aesthetic realms.

Results

Word bank construction

We encoded words in reviews according to the theoretical framework of aesthetic realms. Ten word banks were constructed. To guarantee the accuracy of word banks, three experts on landscape and architecture were invited to vote on every word in the word banks after explaining the detailed meaning of every aesthetic realm. The final word banks of the aesthetic realms, shown in Table 2, were rich in content and distinct in traits, containing not only the distinct detailed features of objects in garden aesthetics but also words reflecting high aesthetic realms (Due to space limitation, Table 2 solely provides words with relatively high frequency). Therefore, the constructed word banks were appropriate for the study.

Table 2. Word banks of garden aesthetics.

Core coding	Secondary coding	key words
Aesthetic object	叠山(Mountain folding)	叠石(stone folding), 湖石(lake stone), 假山(rockery), 山石(mountain stone), 中峰(middle peak), 远山(distant mountain), 见山(View the mountain from afar), 嶙峋(jagged), 石景(stone scenery)
	理水(water system layout)	碧水(blue water), 波光粼粼(sparkling waters), 池水(pond water), 临水(waterside), 湖中(in lake), 倒影(inverted reflection in water), 飞瀑(waterfall), 曲水(meandering Stream), 水池(pool), 荷塘(lotus pond)
	花木(plant)	苍翠(dark green), 繁花(full-blown flowers), 古木参天(ancient trees tower to the skies), 红叶(red autumnal leaves), 花木(flowers and trees), 菊花(Chrysanthemum), 海棠(Begonia), 落叶(fallen leaves), 绿意盎然(Spring is everywhere)
	建筑(architecture)	飞檐(upturned eaves), 大门(gate), 白墙(white wall), 回廊(ambulatory), 雕梁画栋(a richly ornamented building), 古建筑(ancient architecture), 池馆(pond house), 楼阁(attic), 漏窗(leaking Window)
	楹联(couplets hung on the pillars of a hall)	匾额(horizontal inscribed board), 牌匾(plaque), 对联(a pair of scrolls containing a poetic couplet), 词赋(an ancient literary form), 楹联(couplet written on scrolls and hung on the pillars of a hall), 题咏(inscriptions and poems), 碑刻(inscriptions on a tablet), 水墨(ink painting without color)
	其他(other)	白鹭(Egret), 古筝(zheng,a Chinese zither with 25 strings), 古琴(guqin, a seven-stringed plucked instrument in some ways similar to the zither), 琵琶(Chinese lute), 昆曲(Kunqu Opera), 清香(refreshing fragrance), 听雨(listen to rain), 丝竹(traditional stringed and woodwind instruments), 流莺(streetwalker), 季节(season)
Aesthetic perception		典雅(elegant), 错落有致(well-proportioned), 独具匠心(have great originality), 安静(quiet), 清幽(quiet and beautiful), 风雅(literary pursuits), 巧妙(ingenious), 浪漫(romantic), 风景如画(scenery is as beautiful as a painting), 温婉(gentle), 古意盎然(ancient style and taste), 秀美(graceful), 小巧玲珑(a miniature of the finest workmanship), 迷人(charming), 精湛(exquisite), 柳暗花明(amidst shading willows and blooming flowers another village appears), 引人入胜(attractive), 值得一看(worth seeing), 开心(joyful), 超值(extra value), 好去处(a good place), 画中游(like travel in the beautiful picture), 美景(beautiful scenery)
Aesthetic association		禅宗(Chan sect), 今犹在(It’s still here today), 历史悠久(have a long history), 明朝(Ming dynasty), 万历(title of the reign (1573-1620) of Zhu Yijun, 13th emperor of the Ming Dynasty), 中华文化(Chinese culture), 浮想联翩(thoughts thronged one ‘s mind), 想象(imagine), 蓬莱(a fabled abode of immortals), 仙府(Fairy Mansion), 苏轼(a poet in Song dynasty, China), 陶渊明(a poet in history of China), 乾隆(an emperor in Qing dynasty of China), 宋明理学(Neo Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties), 文人(Brahmins), 禅意(Buddhist mood), 浮生六记(Six Chapters of a Floating Life)
Spiritual mood		不可名状(indescribable), 浮生若梦(Life passes like a dream), 恍惚(trance), 襟怀(mind), 悲欢离合(grief at separation and joy in union), 恍若隔世(as different as if a lifetime had passed), 如痴如醉(delude one to folly), 感慨万千(filled with a thousand regrets), 镜花水月(a mirage, insubstantial objects), 流连忘返(indulge in pleasures without stop), 遗世独立(remain aloof from the world), 心驰神往(have a deep longing for), 悟道(realize the truth or philosophic theory)

Only high-frequency words are listed here due to the limitation of space.

Calculation of indexes of aesthetic realms

A list (a type of data structure in Python programming language) could be obtained after word segmentation for each review. Every element in the list matched the word in word banks of aesthetic realms. The number of successful matches between elements in the list and words in the word banks is the index of the aesthetic realm corresponding to the word banks. The maximums, means, and standard errors of the indexes of aesthetic realms of different gardens are shown in Figs. 1–3, respectively.

Fig. 1 [Images not available. See PDF.]

Radar plot of maximum of indexes of aesthetic realms of gardens.

Fig. 2 [Images not available. See PDF.]

Radar plot of mean of indexes of aesthetic realms of gardens.

Fig. 3 [Images not available. See PDF.]

Radar plot of standard error of indexes of aesthetic realms of gardens.

Figure 1 shows that, from low to high aesthetic realms, the maximums of aesthetic indexes gradually decrease, which shows the gradual decrease of numbers of words expressing aesthetic realms, and the corresponding extents of aesthetic experience of gardens also decreases successively. Lingering Garden had a higher maximum index of AO than other gardens, indicating that tourists could notice more objects in Lingering Garden than in other gardens.

Figure 2 shows that the radar chart of means of AO index is within that of AP. It is revealed that tourists paid more attention to AP than AO; and AO were described less than AP. This suggests that most tourists can reach the AO from AP. In Fig. 1, AO have a higher maximum index than AP. The possible reason is that individual tourists paid more attention to objects. The radar charts of both AS and SM were within those of two other aesthetic realms, indicating that the words of describing high aesthetic realms gradually declined.

Figure 3 shows that the standard errors of AP are close to those of AOs for all gardens, and they fluctuate within a large range. Although the value range of indexes of AO was larger than AP, the percentage of reviews with a high AO index was low. We conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) for the indexes of four aesthetic realms using SPSS software to determine whether the seven gardens exhibited significant differences regarding the transition probabilities of the four aesthetic realms. The results of 7 gardens all showed the significance at the 5% level, indicating significant differences in the mean scores for AO, AP, and AS among the seven gardens. However, the standard errors of Garden of Cultivation were high for AO and AP, and the converse was true for Geyuan Garden. The indexes of AA and SM had low fluctuations. This was because their value was low and the quantization of words for describing high aesthetic realms was also reduced. According to the ANOVA results, tourists exhibit no significant difference in the realm of SM for different gardens.

Overall analysis of the transition of aesthetic realms

The transition probabilities among aesthetic realms in reviews are shown in Fig. 4 for the seven study cases. Each garden showed an approximate consistency of probability transition. The transition probability of low aesthetic realms was higher than that of a high aesthetic realm. The transition from AO to AP was highest, and the transition from AA to SM was lowest. However, leaping transitions were also relatively low, such as AO to AA (skipping AP) and AP to SM (skipping AS). Figure 4 demonstrates the theoretical framework of the aesthetic realm of gardens: “AO- > AP- > AA- > SM”, i.e., the aesthetic experience of gardens tourists starts with the identification of detailed objects, and the intuitive perception of objects is the basis of deep aesthetic experience. Based on the results, the probability of transition to SM is generally low (the probability from AA to SM is less than 0.15), showing no evidence to support that the majority of modern tourists have reached the highest aesthetic realm of “conform to nature and let your mind roam freely” (乘物以游心) while experiencing classical gardens, though it cannot be conclusively stated that they have difficulty attaining it.

Fig. 4 [Images not available. See PDF.]

Transition probability of single realm of aesthetic experience.

We further calculated the multiple-step transition probability of aesthetic realms, as shown in Fig. 5. The multiple-step transition probability of aesthetic realms also shows a consistent pattern for the seven study cases. The probability of “AO- > AP- > AA” is significant. The “AO- > AP- > AA” of other gardens are above 0.2, except for Lion Grove Garden, and Garden of Cultivation is highest (0.364), showing that at least one-third of tourists could reach the AA realm by two continuous transitions from the AO. Compared with single transition, the probability of experiencing sublimation of “AO- > AP- > AA- > SM” is not high at only 0.05 overall. Notably, the probability of “AO- > AP- > SM” is even lower than the complete process transition of “AO- > AP- > AA- > SM”. The transition probability of “AO- > AA- > SM” without AP is even lower at close to 0. The above analysis demonstrated that AO and AP play indispensable and critical roles during the sublimation process of garden experience from AO to SM.

Fig. 5 [Images not available. See PDF.]

Multiple step transition probability of aesthetic experience.

Analysis of transition probability of a single type of aesthetic object

We calculated the transition probability of aesthetic realms related to different AOs in six categories—“hill and rocks,” “waterbody,” “architecture,” “plants,” “couplets,” and “others”—to explore the differences among the seven gardens in the potential effects of various AOs to stimulate higher aesthetic realms, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6 [Images not available. See PDF.]

Transition probability of single type of aesthetic object.

The results showed a significant difference in transition probability across different AOs. For example, the transition probability from “couplets” to higher aesthetic realms is noticeably lower than that from “architecture.” In addition, the transition probability of a single type of AO among the seven gardens also showed inconsistent patterns among different gardens. Surprisingly, Humble Administrator’s Garden and Lion Grove Garden, as the most renowned of the seven gardens, had the lowest overall transition probabilities of aesthetic realms among the group. To explore the differences of aesthetic index of various objects among gardens, we investigated the standout single object with high transition probability in the gardens, which include “hill and rocks” of Lion Grove Garden, “hill and rocks” and “plants” of Geyuan Garden, “architecture” and “waterbody” of Garden of Cultivation, “rock and hills” in Lion Grove Garden and Geyuan Garden, “waterbody” in Garden of Cultivation, “architecture” in Ouyuan Garden and “others” of Master-of-Nets Gardens. Based on analysis of reviews, the category of “others” in Master-of-Nets Gardens mainly refers to the soundscape elements represented by storytelling and ballad singing in the Suzhou dialect of China.

In addition, “architecture” in Geyuan Garden and “couplets” and “plants” in Garden of Cultivation were related to a high probability of transition to AP and AA but a relatively low probability of transition to SM. Thus, it can be seen that, because of certain characteristics, the object elements of these gardens can be identified and paid close attention to by tourists in sensory mode, which can effectively arouse an initial intense aesthetic experience but do not have obvious effects on further sublimation of aesthetic experience and fail to inspire emotional agitation and philosophical thinking of higher realms. On the contrary, “hill and rocks” in Lingering Garden and Ouyuan Garden had no significant transition probability in AP and AA but could inspire a high-realm aesthetic experience—SM. It was shown that the “rocks and hills” of the two gardens is not the most outstanding object in AP, but tourists have a high probability of reaching higher aesthetic enjoyment after savoring a stonescape.

Analysis of interaction effect in the transition of aesthetic realms

To explore the interaction effect of multiple AOs, we further calculated the transition probability of aesthetic realms with AOs in pairs. The analysis results indicated that the AO pairings of “architecture” and “others,” “couplets” and “waterbody,” and “architecture” and “plants” bring about a leap in transition probability in Geyuan Garden and Garden of Cultivation, as shown in Fig. 7. Broadly speaking, compared with the transition probability of a single object, the transition probability from the lower aesthetic realm to SM enjoyed a noticeable increase with the pairing of multiple AOs. This result confirmed that the aesthetic experience usually does not act individually but echoes among rich and diverse aesthetic objects during the process of touring. The interaction among multiple AOs can effectively build a bridge from intuitive perception to harmony between emotions and landscape scenes, thus achieving the goal of stirring mood.

Fig. 7 [Images not available. See PDF.]

Transition probability of the interaction effect of multiple aesthetic objects.

Conclusions and discussion

This study provided insights into the realms of aesthetic experience of modern tourists touring classical Chinese gardens. By categorizing aesthetic experience into four realms and exploring the transition process among them, we gained a detailed understanding of tourists’ aesthetic experience. To explore the aesthetic index of each aesthetic realm, we created word banks for the four aesthetic realms of classical gardens using natural language processing and manual encoding. We applied a text pattern matching algorithm to analyze the associations among different aesthetic elements. Additionally, we used a random Markov chain model to explore the transition process between the realm’s aesthetic and its transition probability.

Proposed mixed approach combining the qualitative research method, quantitative method and big data analysis, allow us to utilize the theoretical sensitivity of researchers in qualitative research to build a framework of aesthetic experience theory in the field of landscape architecture. This study also took advantage of the universality of big data to support the credibility of a transition probability model. With in-depth mining of online tourism reviews, the mixed approach captured the dynamic transition process of aesthetic realms of tourists during their touring in classical Chinese gardens. To the best of our knowledge, this study is among the first to apply the research paradigm of a mixed approach combining big data with natural language processing technology to aesthetics research of classical Chinese gardening art. The findings showed high uniformity and consistency in transition patterns of realms of aesthetic experience from multiple classical Chinese gardens, indicating the credibility of our theoretical framework and the reliability of the analysis model.

The results revealed a high transition probability from the realm of AO to AP but rare transitions from AO to the higher realms of aesthetic experience among contemporary tourists. We also analyzed the transition probability of single AOs, and found a surprisingly low transition probability from “couplets,” which are a core element in classical Chinese gardening design theory (Ji 2012), to higher aesthetic realms. This finding suggests a significant change of the zeitgeist in the link between aesthetic experience and AOs in classical gardens that reflects the changes of social culture and routine life experience. Compared with the ancient scholars, who were the original designers and routine users of the classical gardens, contemporary tourists perceive the classical gardening art at a lower cognitive level without fully understanding its spiritual loftiness (Gao and Liu 2021). One potential underlying reason for this phenomenon is that traditional culture, including classical gardening art, is often abstracted into aesthetic cultural symbols in modern mass media and introduced to the public without considering the longitudinal transition of cultural symbols and interpretation of the meanings in the given historic context (Ding et al. 2021). The lack of profound comprehension results in tourists’ incompetence to reach higher aesthetic realms and inherit the rich cultural heritage of classical Chinese gardening art.

This finding has critical policy implications for landscape architecture practice and provides key theoretical support on how to inherit the essence of classical gardening art and meet the aesthetic preferences of contemporary people (Ren and Djabarouti 2023). The results indicated that modern landscape design should avoid oversimplifying the rich cultural heritage of classical Chinese gardens into a superficial interpretation of single AOs. Instead, landscape architects and experts in historic preservation should intentionally guide and strengthen aesthetic cultivation by using a variety of approaches to stimulate tourists’ aesthetic activity and lead them to higher aesthetic realms.

The results of data analysis resonated with the theory of Han Pao-Teh that the art of the classical garden, similar to painting, involves the creation of a virtual reality, which requires the observer to engage their imagination to fully appreciate and attain a state of spiritual detachment (Han 2004). This finding confirmed the crucial role of AA as a vital bridge between tourists and higher aesthetic realms and could provide insights for landscape architecture designers and policymakers to facilitate AA. This finding has practical implications. First, designers could use common sense background stories and tips to expand the breadth and depth of potential AA, thus guiding tourists to construct the overall cognitive aesthetic image, which could help promote the aesthetic experience to higher realms. In addition, designers could focus on employing the vocabulary of AOs with distinctive historic perceptions from classical gardens, such as rocks, bodies of water, plants, and buildings, to capture tourists’ attention from the physiological realm and arouse a stronger sense of pleasure.

The results indicated that among the seven categories of AOs, “architecture,” “plants,” and “waterbody” could lead the highest transition probability from AO to AP. This outcome is particularly interesting when compared with the established body of work in this field, which generally emphasized “shanshui”(山水), meaning “rocks” and “water” as the two core elements in traditional Chinese landscape aesthetic (Gao and Liu 2021). The possible reasons for this discrepancy may be attributed to the greater intuitiveness of garden architecture compared with landscape “hill and rocks” and “waterbody,” which more likely capture tourists’ attention. Another possible potential reason is that the names of landscape architectures, being distinct nouns, are considerably likely to be recorded in travel reviews. Consequently, this may lead to an overestimation of transition probabilities in the calculations.

limitations and future research

Several limitations must be acknowledged in this research. First, there is a close relationship between tourists’ cultural literacy and their aesthetic experience in the gardens. This study used the text of online tourism reviews as the research data without distinguishing the authors with various cultural and professional backgrounds, which may lead to a problem in the representativeness of research samples. In the future, more in-depth text data analysis can be conducted in combination with machine learning technology to analyze the aesthetic realm transition process of different groups of people to further explore the conclusions. Another limitation of this study lies in the fact that the results of aesthetic perception analysis may be influenced by the tourists’ emotional state and personal cultural background. However, the large sample size of this research helps to mitigate the impact of this limitation on the analysis outcomes. Third, this research method has not yet described the framework of aesthetic perception typology and differentiated the intensity of each aesthetic realm. In the future, the structure of the word banks could be further improved to enhance the depth and accuracy of aesthetic experience and content recognition. Finally, because of privacy concerns and the difficulty in expressing association and spirituality, the statistics of word frequencies in tourists’ reviews may have a reporting bias. In addition, some tourists do not post online reviews, especially for the elderly, children, or residents. In the future, in-depth review data, along with online reviews, will be used to further explore the impact of data collection bias and individual traits or states on the results.

Acknowledgements

This research received financial support from the project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 72162011) and Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (grant numbers: AB23026053).

Author contributions

Mengyuan Xu (First Author) and Haitao Yu (Corresponding author) contributed equally to this work.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical statement

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

Informed consent

This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of the authors.

Supplementary information

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-04438-2.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Realms of aesthetic experience of classical Chinese gardens based on semantic analysis of online tourism reviews

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