| Huizhou,
former name of Huangshan City, was situated in the south of
Anhui, it had a little bigger area than today's Huangshan
City, including Jixi County, Jingde County of Anhui and Wuyuan
County of Jiangxi. Because of it's long history and glorious
culture, it had formed its own nice and elegant architecture
style, known as Huizhou Architecture.
In
Huizhou, well-preserved ancient architecture is abundant:
houses, archways, temples, steles, pavilions, towers, tombs
and so on, from those constructions we can easily find the
belief, custom and world view of former people of this area.
Among them residences and archways are prominent.
Influenced
by local geography, economy, traditional concept and custom,
Huizhou Architecture features Feng Shui(Chinese geomancy),
high white-and-black house and Huizhou Four Carvings.
The priority would be given to Feng Shui (Chinese Geomancy)
when choosing a site and planning the layout for a village
as well as a house. Fengshui is based on Yin-Yang, Wu-Xing
and the Eight Diagrams theory. As a part of nature, men is
influenced by environment. Feng Shui is a combination of town-planning,
environmental improvement, architecture and interior decoration.
Feng Shui practically focus on choosing location for residence,
business, even tomb, as well as methods to improve their original
environmental quality.
In Huizhou, under the guidance of Feng Shui, the site of village
or residence is prudently chosen, houses' gateway should avoid
facing chimney or road, otherwise, a mirrors or scissor would
be hung on the door's lintel, to ward off evils; water is
symbol of fortune and luck. Fireproofing and guard against
theft are also major factors to be considered. That's why
villages is usually sited near streams, lakes or rivers, and
houses have high walls.
Houses
in Huizhou are dominated by white and black. The wall is white
washed, the tile roof is black. Local people prefer simple
and impressive color rather than florid color to beautify
their residences, seek the harmony with surrounding green
trees, lush bamboos, clear streams. The wall is higher than
its roof, preventing fire from spreading in case a house catch
fire, so it's also called fireproofing wall. Another name
is horse-head wall because of the shape of the slim protruding
part near the eave. Another function of the high wall is to
preclude thief from climbing in, addition to the high wall,
people tend not to open window on the wall, windows usually
are small and high if any. Windows are replaced by Tianjing
(Sky Well) which can admit daylight and fresh air instead.
Most
owners of those houses were farmers and merchants, the house
is usually small or medium size. According to the rule in
ancient China, the higher the the social status is, the bigger
the size of house. So the merchants were not allowed to build
big residences even though they were rich enough for they
were at the bottom of the social status, even lower than farmers,
craftsmen, let alone officials. Farmers were not able to afford
big-sized dwellings. So rich merchants spent a lot of money
decorating their houses with delicate carvings, they were
wood carving, bamboo carving, stone carving and brick carving.
Carving skills are well developed, those four kind of carvings
are known as Huizhou Four Carvings. Carvings are plentiful
on houses, clan temples and archways, etc.
Another
highlight of Huizhou Architecture is archway(Paifang) that's
peculiar to China, abundant and well-preserved in Huizhou,
for detailed information on archway, please visit Tangyue
Archway Group.
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