One place for self-cultivation is the scholar's garden.

"During the early Ming Dynasty, Admiral Zheng He and his fleet sailed to as far as the east coast of Africa, but you don't see a painting from that period in which a conquering general is planting a flag on a beach. Instead, the Chinese elite prefer to be seen in their own garden" he said. "Above all, they wanted to be remembered not as bureaucrats or governors of the state, but as gentlemen who understood the refined pleasures of painting, calligraphy, music and chess."

Hearn sees the construction of the Ming section of the Great Wall as the era's most potent metaphor for China as a walled garden.

"They probably saw no need to go beyond this vast, perfect garden," says Hearn, referring to a closed-door policy partly blamed for the country's decline in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Back to his own garden at The Met, Hearn said one thing he cannot help noticing is that while Chinese visitors tend to walk along the covered corridor skirting around the center of the garden, most Westerners step right into the middle.

"For ancient Chinese, the most valuable thing was the empty space," he says, evoking the concept of liubai, a crucial aesthetic principle that translates into "retaining the blankness (for it is imbued with meaning)".