The Routledge Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Culture

Sin-wai Chan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315453477
• Subtopic: Asian Art
• Index: Social Sciences

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Culture offers an in-depth discussion of cultural aspects of China from the ancient period to the pre-modern era, lasting over 5,000 years, comprised of 7,000 word pieces by more than 20 world-leading academics and experts.

Addressing areas such as China studies, cultural studies, cultural management, and more specific areas – such as religion, opera, Chinese painting, Chinese calligraphy, material culture, performing arts, and visual arts – this encyclopedia covers all major aspects of traditional Chinese culture.

The volume is intended to be a detailed reference for graduate students on a variety of courses, and also for undergraduate students on survey courses to Chinese culture.

1
ARCHITECTURE IN TRADITIONAL CHINA

Nancy S. Steinhardt

Introduction

Architecture stands across the nearly ten million square kilometres of land on the eastern side of the Asian continent that today comprises China. Above ground, buildings remain from the earliest centuries CE; the archaeological record of Chinese architecture is more than five millennia older. China’s major building materials through the entire period have been wood, brick, and stone. From group settlements to multiple-walled urban centres, whether royal or vernacular, religious or secular, public or private, China’s built environment has been erected almost exclusively by craftsmen and artisans. Chinese architecture is distinguished from buildings worldwide by the length and consistency of its building tradition and so few architects whose names are associated with it.

Wood joinery and the timber frame that is achieved are defining features of Chinese architecture. The interlocking network of vertical, horizontal, and sometimes diagonal or curved wooden members is the result of a modular system whereby the measurement of almost any piece can be calculated from the dimensions of another piece. Modular construction means that from individual components such as pillars to entire planar sections of a building, all can be replicated, increased, decreased, repositioned, or eliminated to change a temple into a palace, a shrine into a house, or a humble dwelling into a lavish family compound. The proportional relationships make it possible to repair or replace damaged parts and to assemble a building in the style of the distant past.

The wooden pieces of a standard Chinese building divide into three layers: the column network, the bracket set layer, and the roof frame. Below and above these three wooden networks, buildings are made of other materials. The base of a Chinese building, the part that interfaces wood above it and earth below, is made of non-rotting material; expensive stone such as marble for an eminent structure, brick for a more humble one, and rammed earth when funds are limited. Only rarely are columns implanted directly into the ground. In more expensive buildings, columns are placed in pilasters rather than directly into a podium. Outside, the building presents as base, structure, and roof. The roof is a defining feature of Chinese architecture. Usually made of ceramic tile, glazed for more important buildings, it is one of the silent symbols that identify the status of the building. The simple, hipped roof covers China’s most eminent buildings, followed in status by the hip-gable roof, with overhanging eaves of yet lower status. The main ridge of any of them may be decorated, adding to its status.

The arrangement of Chinese buildings in space similarly exhibits continuity over millennia. The horizontal axis is primary. It is usually north–south and the most important buildings are positioned on it. Spatial magnitude is expressed by longer and longer lines of buildings along horizontal planes, not vertically, for space requires ownership of land; someone with wealth expands one-storey buildings across more and more space. Even China’s most important buildings, including the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, are only one storey. The height of columns across the front façade of the Hall of Supreme Harmony is about 8.43 metres, a mere five times the height of a man.

Chinese buildings are positioned around courtyards according to a principle known as four-sided enclosure. When only three sides of a courtyard have buildings, the principle is called three-sided enclosure, for the fourth side is implied. South, the orientation of the Forbidden City, is the cardinal direction. Every courtyard has one most important structure. Almost every courtyard and building complex is entered through a gate. Gates are so important that in rare cases of a single building, it is never in total isolation because a gate is in front of it. The gate is psychological as much as physical. Like the enclosing space to which a gate may join, it marks the boundary between more sanctified or imperial space behind and the profane world outside it.

A final feature distinguishes the Chinese building tradition from all others. Upon the establishment of the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949, archaeology became a state-sponsored enterprise. Since then, the history of Chinese architecture has been written through physical evidence above and below ground.

China’s earliest architecture

The physical evidence of cities in China is earlier than evidence of individual buildings, probably because buildings were made of perishable materials whereas city walls were constructed of rammed earth. Urbanism in China began by the sixth millennium BCE. For the next four millennia, the evidence is primarily archaeological, with a wall defining a city. This physical definition is reflected in the translation of the Chinese character cheng as both wall and city. When a wall is found, Chinese archaeologists assume it signifies a group settlement. At least one wall, at Pingliangtai in Henan, was squarish, about 185 metres on each side. The square is an ideal shape that would be associated with Chinese cities through history.

Much of China’s earliest architecture developed along major rivers. If we believe texts, the earliest Chinese residences were below ground in the form of cave dwellings and elevated aboveground on wooden stilts. Evidence for both types has been found from the Neolithic period (ca. 6000–2000 BCE) along China’s two major rivers: semi-subterranean dwellings along the Yellow River in the North and stilted houses near the Yangzi River (Changjiang) in the south. The southern site Hemudu in Yuyao county, Zhejiang, preserves evidence of timber-framing, including both straight posts for raising a structure above swampland and interlocking wooden pieces. Dadiwan in Gansu province of western China had two structures joined by an arcade. One of the largest Neolithic sites is at Banpo, due east of the modern city Xi’an, where it is expected that size of ruins will be sixty square kilometres. Banpo had circular and four-sided dwellings, drainage ditches, and a large structure known as the Great House that may have been used for ceremonies.

Ceremonial architecture is also believed to have been included in Neolithic villages in southeastern and northeastern China. Altars dated ca. late fifth to early third millennium BCE have been found at Yuhang in Zhejiang and in Liaoning. The Liaoning remains, examples of the Neolithic culture known as Hongshan, include stone-covered tombs and stone altars. The largest Neolithic walled city excavated to date is at Shimao in Shaanxi province. Heavily fortified with corners towers, it was about four kilometres square.

By the second millennium BCE, capital city and palace building were underway in China. The city at Erlitou dates ca. 1900–ca. 1500 BCE. At its peak the population was as high as 30,000. So was royal necropolis construction. According to tradition, the dynasty Shang (ca. 1600–1046 BCE) ruled from seven capitals. An early one, whose ruins lie beneath the modern city Zhengzhou in Henan province, had a wall nearly seven kilometres in perimeter. Another Shang city was at Shixianggou, in Yanshi, near Erlitou. The last Shang capital, at today’s Anyang, also in Henan, had a royal cemetery with the graves of at least eleven Shang kings and more than 1,400 subsidiary burials (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Royal Tomb No. 1001, cemetery at Anyang, ca. thirteenth century BCE

Source: Public domain

Sacrificial victims were found in the subsidiary burials as well as in the royal tombs. Anyang included the grave of the female warrior Lady Hao. Every Shang capital had palaces enclosed by walls or arcades on four sides and workshops for the production of bronze vessels and other crafts.

The first millennium BCE witnessed an unprecedented burst of city building in China. Although the Zhou dynasty (1046–221 BCE) had two primary capitals, one at Chang’an from 1046–770 and one in Luoyang from 770–221, every ruler aspired to control a state, and every state needed a capital. Among the hundreds of excavated Zhou cities, several patterns of urbanism dominate. Each would persist for several millennia. Most important is the designation of a walled area distinct from the rest of the city for the imperial palace. A central palace-city, with an outer wall approximately equidistant from its four faces, follows the description of a ruler’s city (wangcheng) in the contemporary text, Rituals of Zhou. Qufu, in Shandong province, where Confucius was born in 551 BCE, was of this plan. An alternate pattern had the ruler’s palace area in the north centre of the outer wall. Most common were double cities, two adjacent walled enclosures positioned north and south, east and west, or at the corners of each other.

Before their conquest of Shang, the Zhou royal family lived in Zhouyuan (plain of Zhou), a fifteen-square-kilometre site in Shaanxi province about 140 kilometres west of Xi’an near the modern city of Baoji. The building complex in Fengchu, Qishan, was 32.5 metres east-west by 43.5 metres north-to-south. Excavation confirms that building complexes were designed around courtyards and that their principal buildings were arranged in straight lines or in the shape of a U. The complex was announced by a screen wall. The main central hall was approached by three sets of stairs. Important buildings were elevated on platforms and their entries were marked by free-standing gates. Shaochen in Shaanxi, about twenty-five kilometres southeast of Fengchu, has yielded fifteen building foundations that date from ca. the eleventh century to late in the Western Zhou period. All buildings were supported by timber frames and elevated on earthen platforms. One building was seven-by-three bays with an almost complete grid of columns whose roof was framed by a main ridge and four additional ridges that emanated from its two ends. Another building was eight-by-three bays and had an entry on one of the shorter sides. The Shaochen site also indicates the use of horizontal bay frames that run from the front to the back of the building. A foundation at Majiazhuang, (about twenty-five kilometres northwest of Fengchu) comprised five courtyards along a 326.5-metre roughly north–south line, each entered by a south central gate, each with at least one gate on the east, and three courtyards with one or more western gates.

Chu, the largest Eastern Zhou state, has yielded more than 5,000 tombs. Royal tombs have approach ramps, stepped sides, and a coffin pit at the centre. They are simpler than tombs of the late Shang rulers in Anyang. The tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, who died in 433 BCE, is one the most important Warring States tombs. Located in Sui county of Hubei, the subterranean tomb was divided into four compartments, each lined with wooden planks and each connected to adjacent sections by four-sided tunnels. It is a pit tomb with no approach ramp. Space between rooms was sealed by charcoal and other materials. The tomb is best known for the set of sixty-five bronze bells weighing about two-and-a-half tons. Another extremely impor-tomb belongs to King Cuo (r. 327–313 BCE tant late-fourth-century BCE) who was buried in a necropolis with close relatives. Burials were beneath truncated pyramidal mounds, his 100.5 by ninety metres at the base and eighteen metres square at the top. A funerary hall was on top of the mound. A bronze plate of ninety-four by forty-eight centimetres and about one centimetre thick inside the tomb had a plan of the burial precinct inlaid with gold on the obverse side. The representation of three-dimensional space in two dimensions in the third century BCE is extraordinary anywhere in the world; the use of scale on this plate is more amazing. Perhaps even more important is the forty-two-character directive on the plate that there be two copies, one for the palace and this one buried with the ruler so that future generations would know how to construct a tomb in the manner of their ancestors. One infers that the patterns of antiquity were to be followed, or more explicitly, that the intent of royal architecture was to model itself after its past and to be continued in the same manner in the future.

Architecture of China’s first empires

Between 230 and 221 BCE, the remaining six warring states fell to Prince Zheng (259–210 BCE) of the state of Qin who declared himself Shi Huangdi, First Emperor, and founded the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) in 221. As he conquered, he built imitations of the palaces of the toppled states in his new capital north of today’s Xi’an in Shaanxi province. He also built new, larger palaces. By the early twenty-first century, foundations of four palaces had been excavated. Evidence is strong that at least one of them had two-storey architecture. The First Emperor’s greatest achievement in palatial architecture was Epang Palace. Its remains are about fifteen kilometres west of Xi’an.

The concept of a travelling palace (xinggong) also blossomed under the First Emperor. He used travelling palaces in the manner they would be used by emperors for the rest of Chinese history: during inspection tours to demonstrate and consolidate his power, he inscribed rocks and erected buildings at sacred and strategic sites en route.

No single tomb in China has aroused as much interest or has been excavated or studied as intensely as the First Emperor’s. It is believed that 700,000 men laboured there and that 16,000 men carried away 42,000 tons of earth that was supplied by 200 diggers over a period of 300 days. Only the squarish mound, approximately 350 metres on each side, is above ground. The underground mausoleum was begun in 246 BCE when Prince Zheng became king of Qin. It was the central focus of a double-walled funerary precinct, the outer wall 6.21 kilometres in perimetre with a gate in each face and the inner wall 3.87 kilometres in perimetre with two north gates and one at each of the other sides. The underground areas were numbered as they were opened. Pits 1 through 3 contained more than 7,000 life-size warriors. Other pits contain small numbers of terra cotta officials, weapons, tools, stone armor and helmets, a 212-kilogram bronze tripod, and cranes and other bronze birds. The First Emperor’s own burial chamber has not been entered, perhaps because of the mercury (or cinnabar) historical accounts say was used to preserve his corpse.

The city of Chang’an, capital of the Western Han (206 BCE – 9 CE), was south of the Wei River and the First Emperor’s capital. With an irregularly shaped outer wall that pre-modern Chinese historians explain as resembling the combined form of the Big and Little Dippers, the Han capital had six large palatial complexes, two main markets, an arsenal and limited residential space. Three of the palaces have been extensively excavated. The second Han capital, however, in Luoyang, of the Eastern Han (23–220 CE), had only two palace areas, only one of which was the primary residence at any given time. Both capitals had at least one major thoroughfare that crossed from a northern to a southern or an eastern to a western wall gate, and other wide roads that were blocked only by the location of a palace. South of the emperor’s palace were building complexes where he or his officials performed state rituals. Building foundations believed to be Han ritual buildi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Aspects of traditional Chinese culture
• 1 Architecture in traditional China
• 2 Agriculture in traditional China
• 3 Bees in Chinese culture
• 4 Jingju: the treasures of classical Chinese theatre
• 5 Boat/Ship building in traditional China
• 6 Buddhism in traditional China
• 7 Chinese calligraphy
• 8 Cantonese culture
• 9 Cantonese opera
• 10 Chinese culture in popular sayings and famous quotes
• 11 The art of Chinese painting: Hong Kong perspective
• 12 Confucianism
• 13 Education in traditional China
• 14 Eight characters, five elements, and Chinese fortune telling
• 15 Embroidery in China
• 16 An overview of Chinese fortune telling in traditional times
• 17 Rouquan – A mysterious school of Chinese martial arts
• 18 Handicraft in traditional China
• 19 Some mysteries of Kunqu music and its melodic characteristics
• 20 Leisure in traditional Chinese culture
• 21 Chinese shadow play
• 22 Taijiquan as a unique living embodiment of Chinese philosophy: its essence, content, and terminology
• Index