The Urbane Imagination approaches the Chinese garden from a perspective that enjoins the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of Chinese civilization and relates them to elements and aspects of the Chinese garden. Kwok conveys relationships of thought and culture, with an appreciation of the sensibilities suggested in the Chinese garden which have led the author to call the total effect “urbane imagination.” The reader will have the opportunity to view these gardens as arrangements in material form of the Chinese humanities – history, thought, arts, and letters.