Inside Ancient Chinese Houses
Women sitting on a k'ang bed in the 1890s
Beginning in the Stone Age, people in China heated their beds before they slept in them. At first people just made a fire on the clay floor, and then swept the ashes away before putting blankets down on the warm floor. By about 100 BC, though, under the Han Dynasty, many houses had a raised brick bed platform called a k'ang with a stove built in underneath, so you could keep the fire going and sit on top on the warm bed. This platform was the main piece of furniture in most houses, and many women and old people spent most of the day sitting on the warm k'ang. Starting around 300 AD, during the Three Kingdoms period, builders invented more complicated pipes under the k'ang so that it worked more efficiently.
Why did people want to punch Socrates?
Where did Egyptians bury your liver?
How old are the Rocky Mountains?
What does a half-timbered house look like?
How do you spin wool?
(a project)
Besides the k'ang, most houses had a wooden table and some wooden stools. They had a water barrel and a grindstone to grind wheat or barley. Depending on how rich you were, you might have very few blankets and curtains and pillows in your house, or you might have a lot of them. You might have chests to hold extra blankets and clothing.
Beginning in the Han Dynasty, as paper became very popular in China, people used paper to make translucent windows. You couldn't see through the paper as you can with glass windows, but paper was much cheaper than glass, and in any case nobody really made glass in China.
Ancient Chinese houses
General information on ancient houses
Main Chinese Architecture page
Main China page
To find out more about ancient Chinese architecture, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
The British Museum Book of Chinese Art, by Jessica Rawson and others (1996). Rawson is a curator at the British Museum, and she uses the collection of the British Museum to illustrate this book. Library Journal calls it "easily the best introductory overview of Chinese art to appear in years".
Art in China (Oxford History of Art Series), by Craig Clunas (1997). Not specifically for kids, but a good introduction to the spirit of Chinese art. Warning: this one is not arranged in chronological order. Instead, it has chapters on sculpture, calligraphy, and so on.
