Architecture

Buddhism was introduced to China around the first century B.C.E. Buddhist temples there were built in the wood-frame tradition that had developed in China around the second millennium B.C.E. A good example, because constrained in size, is one of the oldest surviving wood buildings in China, the Nanchan Temple on Wutai Mountain in Shaanxi province, begun 782 C.E. Stupas in China were replaced by pagodas, inspired not only by the multilevel chatra but also drawing on the tradition of local watchtowers. The horizontal layers of the stacked parasols were modified as encircling projecting roof bands (as in the brick pagoda of the Song Yue temples at Song Mountain, Henan province, built in 523). From this evolved the timber-framed pagoda, with superimposed broad eaves carried by the densely stacked brackets, as seen in the Fogong temple at Yingxian, Shaanxi province, built in 1056.

Before the onslaught of Western influence in the nineteenth century, China's social structure had long been shaped by two philosophical systems resulting from the writings of two sages of the fifth century B.C.E.—Laozi and Confucius (Kong fuzi). These two systems fit nicely with the Chinese concept of yin and yang, the necessary presence of basic dualities or polarities in the universe, such as male and female. The system of Laozi, called Daoism (from Dao, "the way"), in comparison with Confucianism, is nonrational or naturalistic, and nonauthoritarian, embracing the spontaneous variation of nature. Confucianism, in contrast, originally developed as a system to ensure logical orderly governance, was rooted in a sense of underlying order, obedience to authority, veneration of ancestors, and respect for one's elders. These two philosophical systems were brought into alignment with the religious tenets of Buddhism, which flourished in China (prior to the Communist Revolution in the mid-twentieth century).

Confucian ideas of an orderly system intended to promote and maintain social order are well illustrated by one of the oldest manuscripts to survive in China, Kao gong ji (The artificer's record), from the fifth century. This remarkable document is a guide for laying out cities, outlining general principles that hold true in large measure for modest residential compounds as well as for the sprawling complex of the imperial household and governmental center of Ming and Qing China—the Forbidden City, Beijing. Chinese culture is about containment—the nation is bounded by a wall (the Great Wall to keep out the barbarians); the city is bounded by a wall (indeed, the word for city and wall is the same, cheng); and the individual household compound is bounded by a closed wall. The Kao gong ji instructs that a capital city should be a square 4,000 feet to a side, oriented to the cardinal directions, with three gates to a side. The main gate should face south, and the principal street runs north-south, leading to the governmental center. Each of the cardinal axes and directions is associated with one of the five elements, with attributes and colors associated with each of the cardinal directions. East is linked with spring, wood, and the color green. South is associated with summer, fire, and red. West is associated with autumn, metal (in particular gold), and white. North is connected with winter, night, and the color black. Where the axes of the city intersect in the center, zhong, is the location of the ruler's residence and place of administration, associated with a vertical axis mundi, earth, and the royal color yellow (the central imperial palace buildings—and only these buildings—were covered with yellow glazed roof tiles). There, in a room facing southward toward a court sat the emperor, likewise facing south, at the center of all things.

Residences were walled family compounds, ruled by the male master, with lesser authority associated with his wife and several consorts. The walled house was made up of a series of inward-focused courtyards, and the "good wife" was one who never ventured outside the walls. Ideally laid out on a north-south axis, the house had a simple door opening to the street, Entrance to Phoenix Hall, Byōdōin Temple, Honshū, Japan. Previously the site of aristocrat Fujiwara Yorimichi's country villa, Byōdōin was converted into a Buddhist monastery in the mid-eleventh century. Phoenix Hall was built at the time of this conversion and was named for its resemblance to the outstretched wings of the mythical bird. © ARCHIVO ICONOGRAFICO, S.A./CORBIS leading to a first inner service court, lined by kitchen and service rooms to the south, with children's and guest rooms east and west. A door in the northern wall of this court led to a second inner court, lined with children's suites east and west, but on the axis on the north side of this court would be the parents' suite of rooms, often in the very center of which was a large room, the ancestral hall, with an altar on its north side for the veneration of ancestors and the gods.

In contrast to this ordered regularity and the straight axial lines of the house itself was the studied and felicitous irregularity of the adjoining garden in compounds of the more well-to-do. In a yin (feminine) and yang (male) balance, the house was seen as Confucian while the garden was Daoist. While some gardens could be large, such as the famous ones in Suzhou, even a small court could be made a symbol of nature by the adroit use of a small lagoon or pond, a few selected trees, a selected unusually irregular rock. Paths were made of curved or broken and bent lines, since inauspicious or malevolent spirits could only move along straight lines. Gardens were considered more difficult to design than houses, and they were intended to look as if they had grown entirely out of nature. Hence, the intellectual study of garden design and the making of gardens was a discipline associated with highly educated poets, philosophers, and men who had distinguished themselves in government service.