At Tiger Hill in Suzhou, we saw some paving patterns which suggested that the workers who did them had quite a bit of freedom deciding how to lay them.

Similarly, along the conserved canal-side lane of Pujiang, the paving seemed spontaneously arranged depending on particular situations without sticking to some fixed scheme.

At the Lingering Garden, melting rocks fuse themselves to straight stone plinths, and green sprays of grass rise sporadically from crevices. In one of its smaller courtyards, a shop displays its precious antiques and curios, in a seemingly random way against ancient engraved calligraphy on walls; its visual allure based on an accumulation of differences or is it similarities based on size and shape?

Elsewhere in the old town centre, the same spontaneous placing, accumulation, and manipulation of things, based on a lively response to what is available, what is possible, what is immediate . There is a constant reactive interplay between self and world; nothing is quite defined, nothing is quite plainly so.