Ancient Chinese Architecture
Most people in ancient China could not afford to live in fancy houses. They lived in small houses made of mudbrick, with only one room and a dirt floor, just the way most people in the Roman Empire or West Asia or Africa lived, and the way most people in the world still live today.
The doors of these houses usually faced south, to keep out the cold north wind.
But rich people had fancier houses, and people also built fancy temples and palaces. All ancient Chinese architecture was built according to strict rules of design that made Chinese buildings follow the ideas of Taoism or other Chinese philosophies.
The first design idea was symmetry: both sides of the building should be the same.
The second design idea was that the roof would be held up by columns, and not by the walls.
The curved tile roofs on most fancy Chinese buildings probably first came into fashion in the Shang Dynasty or in the Chou Dynasty.
In the Han Dynasty (200's BC), Buddhism first came to China from India. Buddhists built pagodas to keep sacred things in. At first these pagodas were wooden towers that got smaller as they got higher. They were related to Indian buildings called stupas.
When Buddhism became more important in China in the 500's AD, during the Three Kingdoms period, architects began to build special Buddhist temples.
Sui Dynasty architects designed a beautiful bridge at Anji, in the early 600's AD. The bridge shows the ideas of symmetry and balance that were important in Taoism.
Under the Tang dynasty, architects designed even fancier Buddhist pagodas, with eight sides. One famous eight-sided stone pagoda is the White Pagoda at Chengde.
Under the Sung dynasty, about the year 1000 AD, people wanted buildings to be tall and thin, with high spires. Buddhist pagodas began to be built of stone. To make them fancier, they had complicated wooden lattices all around them.
While the Mongol Yuan dynasty ruled China, about 1200-1300 AD, they built great palaces at Beijing, with many huge halls. Unfortunately these palaces were all destroyed later.
The great architectural accomplishment of the Ming dynasty in the 1400's was to build the Forbidden Palace, where the emperors lived.
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.
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