Zheming “Taro” Cai awarded June and Simon K.C. Li Fellowship in East Asian Garden and Landscape Prints

Zheming “Taro” Cai, a PhD candidate in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, has received the June and Simon K.C. Li Fellowship in East Asian Garden and Landscape Prints awarded by The Huntington, a cultural and educational institution in San Marino, Calif.

The annual fellowship supports innovative research focused on East Asian gardens and landscapes.

During his year-long fellowship, Cai will investigate gardening as a technical practice and form of embodied knowledge in pre-modern China. Drawing on The Huntington’s collection of Chinese paintings, prints, horticultural treatises and living gardens, his project will examine how gardening labour was represented, transmitted and encoded in visual and textual sources.

“We are delighted to celebrate Taro’s great achievement in winning a postdoctoral fellowship at The Huntington, where he will prepare his fascinating dissertation on transnational exchange between China and the U.S., through ‘garden diplomacy,’ for publication,” said Claire Zimmerman, director of the PhD in architecture, landscape, and design (ALD PhD) program at Daniels. “We further congratulate Taro, who will shortly defend his dissertation as one of the very first graduates of the ALD PhD.” 

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