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Writing the Yuan Palace Part II
Certainly Zhu Xie also included some photographs in his book, but it was the maps that were equally important, if not more so, than the textual verifications of the palace buildings, since he regarded the lack of maps thereof to be a common problem in early sources of palatial architecture. He based his maps on ...
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Writing the Yuan Palace Part I
Inside the southern Lizhengmen Gate is called A Thousand Steps Corridor, which is about 700 steps. [There is] a Lingxingmen Gate with screen walls. [The walls are] about 20 li in circumference. The locals call them the Hongmen Lanma Wall. About dozens of (another version says twenty) steps inside the gate is a river. Three ...
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“Ai Weiwei ‘Literally’ Smashes China’s Traditions in Art and Architecture” – Really?!
Ai Weiwei, a contemporary Chinese artist, was widely reported to “literally” destroy China’s tradition in art in his 1995 act of dropping a Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) urn and breaking it.An article calls this performance “an iconoclastic act”. Ai was quoted as saying that this gesture is “powerful only because someone thinks ...
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“Zooming In” and “Zooming Out”: random thoughts on think patterns in Chinese and in English
I could compare the two ways in which we think in Chinese and in English as “zooming in” and “zooming out” respectively. By these I mean the Chinese, myself as an example, are used to thinking in general terms, choosing a broad context to start our writing; whereas thinking in English resembles more closely a ...
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Disappearing vernacular architecture – Beijing Hutongs
I was back in Beijing for about six weeks this summer, and things were getting worse. Whole neighborhoods of hutongs (traditional Beijing alleyways) are still being demolished, ancient residences gone, while new building projects are under way. Below are some pictures I took outside of the Qianmen area (almost right in the heart of old ...
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Saving Suzhou’s Vernacular Architecture – Part 3
In his preservation work on the city of Suzhou, Professor Ruan sets out by providing a historic contextualization of the city, by examining its current economic, political, and social status, and the character of the city as determined by its historic and cultural significance in relation to its architectural heritage. In this case, the canal ...
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Saving Suzhou’s Vernacular Architecture – Part 2
The city of Suzhou has a history stretching back more than 2,500 years, serving as the capital city of the Wu Kingdom as early as the Spring and Autumn Period (722- 481 B.C.E.) in 514 B.C.E.It is situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores ofLakeTaiin theprovinceofJiangsu,China. The city has ...
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Saving Suzhou’s Vernacular Architecture – Part 1
This series of posts are taken from a paper I wrote earlier this year about the practical aspect of historic preservation of Chinese vernacular architecture. It takes the city of Suzhou as a case study, and focuses specifically on Professor Ruan Yisan’s work on the city. Ruan Yisan (b. 1934) is former Professor of Urban ...
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The Art of Chinese Architecture: An Illustrated History
This is something I wrote last year. I thought I’d share it. The Art of Chinese Architecture: An Illustrated History (Yitao Xu – pictured right – 2002) presents the development of the Chinese architectural system, as well as the social and technological conditions that have sustained Chinese architecture over the last 4,000 years. Among colorful ...
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A Chinese vernacular architecture trip log – Diary entries from Summer 2004
These are some diary entries that I made when traveling in southwesternChina’sSichuanProvinceand Chongqingin the summer of 2004. On this three-week trip, I mainly traveled by bus over dirt roads or by boat on the Yangzi River to a dozen remote ancient villages, the oldest of which was 1400 years old. The simplicity, practicality and elegance ...
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The beginning of the Chinese Vernacular Architecture Blog
Although this blog is still a work in progress, I wanted to make it public so that I can leverage the community of architectural historians on the web to help me build the best site possible. This site will focus on the developing field of Chinese vernacular architectural history and will hopefully function as both ...