II. Vernacular Dwellings of the Qin, Han and Two Jin Dynasties

　　Although short, the Qin Dynasty played a vital role in the development of China. The six states were unified, creating a large, centralized empire, decentralized states were organized into unified prefecture and county), and the characters as well as the system of weights and measures were unified. As far as architecture was concerned, the move of 120.000 rich and powerful families of the six states to the capital city of Xianyang was a boost to culture in general and architecture in particular.

　　During Qin and Han, Fengshui (a form of geomancy) began to develop. According to this system, Yijing and bagua (the eight diagrams) are taken as a means of Fengshui, which is based on the theory of qi (energy), that of yin (negative) and yang (positive) and that of wuxing (five elements), and was used to discover the ideal location for a building. Fengshui was based on a very ancient wisdom. In addition, in the reign of Wudi Emperor of the Han, Confuciamsm was held in high esteem and all the other 5 disciplines were rejected. As a result, integral order, a ritual system of facades and configuration became key elements of vernacular dwellings. Buildings became more rigid in style, less flexible and showed less variety. The Han Dynasty dwellings, for instance, consisted of a high and large main house with the main room in front and the bedroom to the rear, symmetrical left and right sides and a courtyard, and interestingly have undergone very little change since. The literary records indicate what form Han Dynasty buildings took, but it was the large number of unearthed cultural relics, such as pictures on stones and bricks, funerary earthenware houses , bronze houses, etc. that have provided figurative information and fascinating details.

　　The unit of dwellings most commonly used in the Han Dynasty, especially the Western Han Dynasty, is the system of one large room and two inner chambers which was also the system preferred by the common people. The size of inner chamber was generally a square zhang (approximately 11㎡). The size of the large room is twice that of inner chamber, so the layout of the house is nearly a square, like the character 田, such a house system of double bays is commonly found in funerary articles, ancestral temples and rock tombs.

　　The layout of smaller-scale dwellings was square or rectangular, with the door of the house either at the center of one of the sides of the house or deviated to one side. Wooden frames were mostly employed for the structure, a solid wall structure being rarely used, and the walls consisted of rammed earth. Windows could be square, horizontally rectangular or circular. Roofs were of the over-hang gable-end-or shallow vault-type. Single-or multi-storeyed dwellings on a slightly larger scale were provided with walled courtyards. In the Han Dynasty, the practice of living in storied buildings was common, in contrast to later times. (Nowadays, there are still storeyed buildings in the southeast and northeast, but in northern China most buildings are single-storeyed.) The vogue of living in storeyed buildings was obviously to slightly raise the lower section of the pile-supported type buildings so that it could be used as the main room while people still lived upstairs. But, owing to the fact that in the north the climate was cold and windy, wooden storeyed buildings were not suitable and later gradually decreased in number. Pile-supported type buildings still prevailed during the Han Dynasty. The saying "sitting on the mat on the ground" has its origins in the custom of doing just this in pile-supported type dwellings. Further evidence that this type of house prevailed during the Han Dynasty has recently been found in funerary articles excavated in Guangzhou.

　　There were, during this period, buildings of a multi-storeyed kind that nearly every well-to-do family or big landlord had. These were the wanglou, or jiaolou, used as a watchtowers. In case of alarm, people could climb up it and beat the drum to call for help". Earthenware watchtowers were often found in Han Dynasty tombs. There were various forms of three, four and five storeys. Most of them are double-or single-bay. Each floor had eaves above and balustrades of sitting height below. Some of the walls were wholly color-painted. It is interesting to note that the structure of wooden pagodas was developed from these. Watchtowers may be used as a reference for today's design of high-rise buildings. All dwellings of better quality built during the Han Dynasty had flights of steps to the left and right. The left one was used by the host for ascending and descending, while the right one was used by guests, as was the custom during the period of Spring and Autumn and that of the Warring States. One was expected to take off one's shoes when entering the house, and then sit on the floor.

　　During this period, beds extended in function and came to be used for everyday activities and for receiving guests. They were accompanied by low tables and had screens behind them and on each side. For the elderly and those held in high esteem a kind of narrow and low bed called to (couch) was still in use, and generally had canopy. The four walls were hung with curtains. The chapter Chen She Shijia (biography of Chen She) in Shiji (the Book of History) tells us of "seeing the hall and curtains on entering the room". Interior decoration of this nature was by then very common. A passage from Gaodiji (biography of Gaoti) in Han Shu (the History of the Han Dynasty reads," planning and deploying within the bed, while determining victory in the battle a thousand Li away". There were five basic types of roof used during the Han Dynasty, namely: the xuanshan roof (overhang gable-end roof), the wudian roof (hipped roof), the tunding roof (shallow-vaulted roof), the xieshan roof (gable-and-hipped roof) and the zuanjian roof (pavilion roof). A multiple-eaved roof, too, emerged through combining the hipped roof and piyan (projecting eaves). In ancient Chinese architecture roofs were most typically grand in scale. A roofscape of a mixture of styles gently interwoven and expressing both magnificence and grace, simplicity and lightness, was a wonderful sight, and had a subjective appeal to the imagination. Although styles developed somewhat in later ages, the basic forms remained the same. Thus, dwellings in the Han Dynasty expressed a certain naivety and ingenuousness, but they were neither dull nor crude in style. Spatially, they were compact but also showed variety and richness of structure. Artistically, many a new style was created and it can be said that a relatively high standard was reached.

　　The period of Wei and Jin saw new ideas emerge, which were upheld by the scholar-official and the literati: sensitivity towards nature, a romantic attitude and a certain open-mindedness. The architecture of the period also reflected such ideas. Many houses at that time had windows in rows with straight latticework and bam- boo or textile curtains, so that the world outside was partly visible. Corridors ran inside the walls around the courtyard, and inverted-V corbel brackets, left natural, and simple in form, were mounted under the eaves. The employment of such brackets continued from the end of the Han Dynasty to that of the Tang. The entrance door- way of some aristocratic houses had hipped roofs with ridge-ends of celestial animal head, however, were only allowed for palaces and not for dwellings unless permission had been granted. Inside, a platform was constructed using short columns and square lumbers to form a wooden frame over which planks were laid. On top of these, mats for sitting on were spread. Customary at the time, as one can see in the Nushizhentu (Portrait of a lady) by Gu Kaizhi of East Jin, was to sit cross-legged. The era of the Northern and Southern Dynasties was an important transit period continuing the two Han Dynasties and succeeded by Sui and Tang. During this period, continual wars and frequently changing dynasties resulted in life being hard and turbulent for each and everyone. Buddhism naturally became the spiritual sustenance of the people. There was a tendency for the intellectual to escape from worldly affairs and the society, and as a result the architecture of vernacular dwellings had a tranquil, detached, even mysterious air.

　　出版：Springer Wien New York

　　ISBN-3-211-83008-1

　　2000年