Walls inspire, Roofs aspire, Chinese Art will never tire

The text below is the excerpt of the book Chinese Art (ISBN: 9781783106998), written by Stephen W. Bushell, published by Parkstone International.

China, in every epoch of its history, and for all its edifices, civil or religious, public or private, has kept to a single architectural model. Even when new types have been introduced from the west under the influence of Buddhism and Mohammedanism, the lines have become gradually toned down and conformed to his own standard by the levelling hands of the Chinese mason. It is a cardinal rule in Chinese geomancy that every important building must face the south, and the uniform orientation resulting from this adds to the general impression of monotony.

The most general model of Chinese buildings is the t’ing. This consists essentially of a massive roof with recurved edges resting upon short columns. The curvilinear tilting of the corners of the roof has been supposed to be a survival from the days of tent dwellers, who used to hang the corners of their canvas pavilions on spears; but this is carrying it back to a very dim antiquity, as we have no records of the Chinese except as a settled agricultural people.

The roof is the principal feature of the building, and gives to it its qualities of grandeur or simplicity, of strength or grace. To vary its aspect, the architect is induced occasionally to double, or even to triple it. This preponderance of a part usually sacrificed in Western architecture is justified by the smaller vertical elevation of the plan, and the architect devotes every attention to the decoration of the roof by the addition of antefixal ornaments, and by covering it with glazed tiles of brilliant colour, so as to concentrate the eye upon it.

The dragons and phoenixes posed on the crest of the roof, the grotesque animals perched in lines upon the eaves, and the yellow, green and blue tiles which cover it are not chosen at random, but after strict sumptuary laws, so that they may denote the rank of the owner of a house or indicate the imperial foundation of a temple.

The great weight of the roof necessitates the multiple employment of the column, which is assigned a function of the first importance. The columns are made of wood; the shaft is generally cylindrical, occasionally polyhedral, never channelled; the capital is only a kind of console, squared at the ends, or shaped into dragon’s heads; the pedestal is a square block of stone chiselled at the top into a circular base on which the shaft is posed. The pedestal, according to rule, ought not to be higher than the width of the column, and the shaft not more than ten times longer than its diameter. Large trunks of the white cedar (Persea nanmu) from the province of Sichuan are floated down the Yangtze river to be brought to Peking to be used as columns for the palaces and large temples.

The cedar is the tallest and straightest of Chinese trees. The grain improves by age, and the wood gradually acquires a dead-leaf brown tint while it preserves its aromatic qualities, so that the superb columns of the sacrificial temple of the Emperor Yung Lo, which date from the early part of the fifteenth century, still exhale a vague perfume.

The pillars are brightened with vermilion and gold; but it is the roof which still attracts most attention, in the interior as well as outside, the beams being often gorgeously inlaid with colours and the intervening ceiling geometrically divided into sunken panels worked in relief and lacquered with dragons or some other appropriate designs.

The stability of the structure depends upon the wooden framework; the walls, which are filled in afterwards with blocks of stone or brickwork, are not intended to figure as supports. In fact, the space is often occupied entirely by doors and windows carved with elegant tracery of the flimsiest character.

The Chinese seem to be aware of the innate poverty of their architectural designs and strive to break the plain lines with a profusion of decorative details. The ridge poles and corners of the sagging roofs are covered with finial dragons and long rows of fantastic animals, arranged after a symbolism known only to the initiated; the eaves are underlaid with elaborately carved woodwork brilliantly lacquered; the walls are outlined with bands of terracotta reliefs moulded with figures and floral sprays; but in spite of everything, the monotony of the original type is always apparent.

Chinese buildings are usually one-storied and are developed horizontally as they increase in size or number. The principle which determines the plan of projection is that of symmetry. The main buildings and the wings, the side buildings, the avenues, the courtyards, the pavilions, the decorative motifs, all the details, in fact, are planned symmetrically. The architect departs from this formal adherence to symmetry only in the case of summer residences and gardens, which are, on the contrary, designed and constructed in the most capricious fashion. Here we have pagodas and kiosques elevated at random, detached edifices of the most studied irregularity, rustic cottages and one-winged pavilions, all placed in the midst of surroundings of the most complicated and artificial nature, composed of rockeries, lakes, waterfalls, and running streams spanned by fantastic bridges, with an unexpected surprise at every turn.

The Old Town of Lijiang, a well-preserved old city of ethnic minorities with brilliant culture, is a central town of the Lijiang County of the Naxi Ethnic Minority in Yunnan Province. As a result of the combination of the multinational culture and the progress of Naxi ethnic minority, the buildings in the town incorporate the best parts of the architectural traits of Han, Bai, and Tibet into a unique Naxi style. All temples are built on the most favourable site according to Fung shui, a geomantic system followed by even the most sophisticated Chinese. Architecturally the roof is a dominant feature, usually made of green or yellow rounded tiles and steeply raked. The ridgepole is decorated with porcelain figures of divinities and lucky symbols, such as dragons and carps.

Ruins in China are rare, and we must turn to books to get some idea of ancient architecture. The first large buildings described in the oldest canonical books are the lofty towers called t’ai, which were usually square and built of stone, sometimes rising to the height of nine meters, so that they are stigmatised as ruinous follies of the ancient kings. There were three kinds of t’ai; one intended as a storehouse of treasures, a second built within a walled hunting park for watching military exercises and the pleasures of the chase, and a third, the kuan ksiang t’ai, fitted up as an astronomical observatory.

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