The main hall (tingtang) was the nucleus of a well-structured traditional Chinese home. Here, in a core room symbolic of the unity and continuity of the family, male members carried out rituals to the gods, honoured their ancestors, received guests, and entertained relatives and friends.While serving formal and ritual functions, main halls sometimes were used for more mundane purposes as multi-functional centres for family life. It was here that seasonal festivals such as at the New Year and periodic weddings and funerals were all celebrated. Here, too, important household decisions were announced and young family members sometimes were tutored. Serving as the formal tocus for almost all the major activities of a household, the main hall expressed not only the social status and economic power of the family but also the level of their cultural refinement and artistic tastes. In traditional China, one only had to enter the main hall and glimpse its furnishings to know a great deal about the status of both living and dead members of the family.

　　Why did people pay so much attention to the arrangement of furniture in the main hall? Central to answering this question is the realisation that Chinese traditionally had an implicit faith in the coexistence of three realms - an illusory paradise in a world beyond, a nether world that transcended the present, and the immediate sphere itself in which humans lived - realms belonging to gods, ghosts, and mortals. These three realms existed not only in the human mind and in the daily behaviour of a family, but also were reflected in the layout of furniture in the main hall.

　　Here within the traditional dwelling, the human realm occupied intermediate ground and was subject to regular inspection by household gods and infrequent visitations from unquiet ghosts who sometimes disturbed the peace of those living within. Inhabiting the ground where gods and ghosts intermingled, each family was obliged to carry out rituals directed towards both groups. Sacrifices and supplicotions to gods were made in order to obtain their protection and enlist their power in order to drive away harmful ghosts. Household members also sought to ingratiate themselves with ghosts in the hope that they would not cause trouble among the living and would happily remain as mere ghosts. Each year, on the 15th of the first lunar month, the Chinese equivalent of All Souls’ Day, people were required to placate all the ghosts waiting in Hell. In line with these beliets, it was essential that the family's main hall provide a locus for ritual and commemoration, including sacrificial worship to gods and filial rememlorance of departed ancestors.

　　For these reasons the main hall of the traditional Chinese home was a space in which gods, ghosts, and humans coexisted. In the main hall people would welcome the gods in their quest for protection and peace. After one's ancestors died they became ghosts who, requiring food for sustenance, frecluently refurned to the main hall in order to be nourished by the offerings of food left for them. The arrangement of the furniture in the main hall was guided by each ot these elements in order to suif the needs of mortals, gods, and ghosts. Both the furniture and ornamentation throughout the main hall were dominated by auspicious themes that summoned good fortune and welcomed benign spirits who were capable of bringing peace to both the living family and their ancestors. The principal function of the most important items of furniture in the main hall - the altar table (shenlong anzhuo) and long side table (da tiaoji) - was to facilitate the offering of sacritices and prayers to the gods using incense and offerings of food and to situate a shrine and memorial tablets for the ancestors (shenwei). In addition, Households typically incorporated decorative features outside their main halls and even on the exterior walls and doors of their dwellings in order to ward off malevolent spirits, especially the ghosts of those who had died without descendants.

　　Even though there were differences in the structured space of Chinese dwellings from region to region, there were certain conventions that governed the placement of furniture within main halls wherever they were found. Ancestral tablets, for example, were generally placed along the northern or back wall of the main hall either in a case attached to the wall or on an altar table. In either case, a long and high altar table (shenlong anzhuo), was positioned along the wall to hold ceremonial paraphernalia such as incense as well as offerings. Each of the upper ends of this imposing table curved upwards and was carved with decorative motifs that were austere in content. The top of the high table was not well adapted to the height of mortals so that the edge of the tabletop met the eye of a person of even modest height. Just in front of the altar table was a bench-like table called a changji that was of moderate length and served mostly for displaying objects. The surface of this long table could be either flat, curved upwards or downwards at either end. Below it was normally a square table called an Eight Immortals' table (baxianzhuo), a necessary piece of furniture that was always used when entertaining guesfs; this table was normally flanked by a pair of backed chairs (kaobeiyi). Chairs of various types were the most numerous furniture type in Chinese main halls and were generally placed according to the preferences of the head ofthe Household. Besides chairs, small round or rectangular stools or benches (dengzi) were placed around the main hall and were used to supplement chairs when needed. Functional tables (zhuo) of various types were quite numerous, usually square pieces of furniture that were second only to chairs in number. Tall, small tables(huaji) for holding either living plants or cut flowers in pots were often as high as the altar table. Low tables called teapoys (chaji) were placed between a pair of chairs, and were designed to place a tea cup within a hand’s reach of each person in the adjacent chairs.

　　Although these commonalities can be seen widely, there are of course differences that reflect each household's economic circumstances and variations in customs. Generally speaking, the choice of furniture was tempered by a family's budget and taste. While some furniture clearly was grander and more elaloorate than others, in most cases the actual layout of the furniture was similar - formal and sober with a clear sense of hierarchy. Symmetry and the presence of a central axis that conveyed asense of seriousness and awe were dominant organising principles in the placement of the furniture. In this way, the furniture layout of a main hall was quite unlike that of Chinese bedrooms and kitchens, each of which was decidedly informal and often quite random in terms of how furniture was situated.

　　While the items ot furniture vary little from place to place, there were changes from dynasty to dynasty as well as some variations in how individual pieces were positioned from one region to another. The Ming dynasty, for example, represents a pinnacle in the development of Chinese furniture with forms that are ausfere yet refined. Made of fine grained timloers, each piece is structurally sound and held together with intricate joinery. Very few fine examples of Ming furniture survive except in museums and in private collections. Qing dynasty furniture, on the other hand, is rather common and is still seen in Chinese homes that can be visited today. The overall style of traditional Chinese furniture is relatively simple with only limited regional variations. At this juncture, let us examine some of the regional difterences in the arrangement of furniture in the main halls of large houses in Shanxi, jiangsu and Zhejiang, southern Anhui,and Fujian provinces.(Fig. 1)

　　Fig.1

　　1. Eight Immortals’table

　　2. Stool

　　3. Chair

　　4. Square table

　　5. Altar table

　　6. Vase

　　7. Mirror

　　8. Ancestral table

　　9. Censer

　　10. High standing table

　　11. Square standing table

　　12. Square table

　　13. Low table

　　14. Courtyard

　　15. Courtyard

　　16. Pond

　　Even though the courtyard - type dwellings of Shanxi province can be seen as represenfative of a northern Chinese type, the large manor houses of Qixian district in the central portion of the province are qualitatively superior. This is attributable to the fact that many people from this district were engaged in lucrative trading activities that took them to all parts of the country. On refurning home, they constructed magnificent rambling manorial homes with many courtyards and surrounding three and five-bay wide structures. When entering the main hall of manor homes in Qixian one notices first that the room is strikingly shallow. This is because in the northern latitudes of China, sunlight is needed within the dwelling in winter. If the room were too deep, sunlight would not penetrate the room during the cold months. Since the main room is rather shallow, the overall space in the room also was not large, and as a result there was room only for limited furniture. While a long side table (changyi) to hold the memorial placlues of ancestors was common in each Shanxi main hall, a full-length altar table (shenlong anzhou) was not generaily used. In addifion to the side table, there typically was an Eight Immortals' table and on each side chairs with backs and along the northern wall display stands for decorative objects and other items would be placed. (Fig. 2) Because the main hall was generally in the middle of a three-bay structure, it was common for alcove-type beds to beplaced in each of the adjacent bays. Alcove-type beds are large, relafively enclosed chambers, veritable rooms within rooms, that served not only as places for sleeping but during the day provided space for leisure, study, ancl even some appropriafe domestic tasks as sewing and emloroidery.

　　Fig.2

　　Furniture in one of the halls of the Qiao family compound in Qiaojiabaocun,Qixian,Shanxi province.A typical furniture arrangement favoured by affluent households in northern China during the Qing dynasty,conveying prominent social status and a life of luxury.

　　The houses of southern Anhui provide a striking contrast with those of Shanxi. A large number of the residents of southern Anhui were prosperous merchants, like those in Shanxi, but here they travelled throughout the productive provinces of central and southern China. On returning home after acquiring wealth, they also built well-appointed houses and filled them with fine furniture. Homes in southern Anhui are unique in that they are usually compact and at least two storeys high. Each was constructed around a central open space called a skywell that was like a small courtyard, providing a focal area for light and air to enter the structure. The main hall was positioned on the northern side of this open space and was open to it, without a wall separating interior from exterior space. The back of the main hall, that is its northern side, was taken up by a timber wall termed “the teacher's wall” (taishibi), to either side of which was an open doorway without door panels that afforded access between the front and rear courts. In front of the “teacHer's wall” was a long side table and an Eight Immortals' table. Several high backed chairs were placed symmetrically on the eastern and western sides of the main hall; these chairs generally were in pairs with a teapoy between them. Decorative items would be placed on the long side table. In the homes of less cultured persons or merchants, these objects sometimes functioned as auspicious relouses using homophonous associations. For example, a vase (ping) placed on the east and a mirror (jing) placed on the west together connoted tranquillity (pingjing). Even though the main halls in homes in southern Anhui were invarialoly small, two or four chairs would always be placed against each side wall with a plaque hung above them. Generally such plaques contained marble insets in which the grain of the marble resembled mountain landscapes. With an inscription carved into the corner of the marble, a “landscape painting” was created.(Fig. 3)

　　Fig.3

　　A view of the front hall of Chengzhitang in Hongcun,Yixian,Anhui province.During the late Qing period,this was a popular setting among the merchant class in south Anhui.

　　In south-western Fujian, co-habitation by members of an extended clan was the customary norm. The main halls of dwellings here were structurally high and quite formal with elaborate and stylish ornamentation. A tall altar table, about 3.3 metres in length, 66 metres deep, and at least a half metre taller than the side table, held ancestral tablets ancd dominated the main hall. Although the upper portion of the altar table curved upwards, the overall appearance of the table was that of an expansive that space that was at once lofty and imposing. In front of the altar table there usually was a lower side table on which incense and offerings were arranged. In front of this stepped table would be placed a square Eight Immortals' table used for entertaining guests or for periodic family meals. Flower stands were positioned at both ends of the altar table, and sometimes also at both ends of the side table. A single chair was placed to both the right and left of the Eight Immortals' table. (Fig. 4) Overall, the furniture increased in height and width from the Eight Immortals' table to the side table and on to the altar table, imparting a sense of clearly defined hierarchy. At either side of the main living room, a large number of chairs, teapoys, square tables, and halt-tables were symmetrically placed. This formal and articulated layout appeared stately yet dynamic, fully expressing the feudal protocol that governed large families.

　　Fig.4

　　A hall of Fuyuantnag in Ma’anxiang,Fujian province,with furniture in a style commonly found in peasant households of this area.

　　The homes jiangsu and Zhejiang are the quintessential Chinese dwellings. Here in the catchment area of Lake Taihu, well-appointed dwellings reflecfed the prosperity of the region. In the modern period, especially, a large number of wealthy people from Shanghai and other cities built villas in the Lake Taihu area,further increasing the splendour of dwellings here. There are several types of main halls in the homes of jiangsu and Zhejiang and, unlike the houses of Shanxi, southern Anhui, and Fujian, these generally were not reserved to function principally as ancestral halls. Indeed, there often were multiple main halls in Jiangsu and Zhejiang dwellings, each serving specific or multiple functions, including not only spaces orrooms to commemorate ancestors (zutang) but also to serve a family's need for a parlour (huating), and a drawing room to receive and enterfain guests (keting).

　　Although the ancestral hall was usually located in a central position in the dwelling, other main halls could be placed in the rear or adjacent to a private garden. There was a broad range of furnifure in the main halls of large dwellings in jiangsu and Zhejiang. Apart from the items of furniture mentioned earlier, there also were couches and screens as well as other assorted pieces. An excluisitely carved couch (ta), used for sitting but also resting, was often placed in the middle of Jiangsu and Zhejiang drawing rooms. To the right and left front of the couch, large or small tables, stools, flower stands, and display cases (babaoge) were placed. In the centre of a parlour, one usually found a set of furniture comprised of a round table with round stools surrounding it. Chairs and teapoys were placed symmetrically to either side of the room. The form of the furniture in such parlours was flexible, including a variety of styles that were descriptively named: “flowering crabapple”type,“plum blossom”type or “high waisted”type. Most chairs had carved or decorated backs that expressed a simplicity of line and purity of form. (Fig. 5) Calligraphy, painting, and suspended screens usually were hung on all four walls and decorative lamps were suspended from the ceiling, together conveying a sense of a lively and dynamic domestic space.

　　Fig.5

　　Reception hall of Bishuizhai in Suzhou,Jiangsu province,furnished in a manner characteristic affluent households in the jiangsu and zhejiang region.Its elegant setting and tranquil atmosphere reveal the cultural accomplishments and developed aesthetic taste of the occupants,probably scholars enjoying great leisure.

　　In conclusion, while each item of furniture in the main hall of a traditional Chinese home had a clearly defined special function, each served to complement the other pieces in the hall. The furniture in the main hall represented the material form in which a family expressed its status, as though it were the outward face of the family itselt. In traclitional China, one only needed to see the furniture in a family's main hall to appreciate the household's social position, economic power, and cultural level. In terms of elemental design principles, Chinese homes typically faced inward and were framed by balanced structures. Internal space was hierarchically organised and ritually centred in ways that heightened the significance of the main hall, the nuclear space of the family within.

　　With contributions to the English version from Professor Ronald G. Knapp

　　ISBN 1-878529-44-7 Yongmingtang