Last week’s post examined at the nature and evolution of one of China’s most characteristic vernacular dwelling plan-forms, the sìhéyuàn (四合院), via the book Exploring Space in Chinese Residential Architecture. Here I would like to take an introductory look at one of the two fundamental elements of these dwellings: the basic building unit or ‘hall’ 堂屋 tángwū (the other being the courtyard 院子 yuànzi). It could be said that the essential nature and form of Chinese architecture is distilled in these two elements and their relationships, and they are found everywhere, across eras and regions, from the grandest temples and villas to the most humble dwellings.

At the heart and beginning of Chinese architecture is the concept of protection. From the earliest recorded history, the Chinese have sought to defend their living environments from threats of invasion by foreign enemies, winter winds, and sand storms by erecting walls to enclose them. From the neolithic period, clusters of dwellings have displayed a centripetal character, and from the Xia Dynasty (c. 2070 - c. 1600 BC) we already see the pattern of tángwū being situated at the north, south, east and west of a central inner courtyard. This form, the sìhéyuàn, reached its maturity in the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD), and has continued down until the present.

The age-old Chinese practice of erecting thick, sturdy earthen walls around dwellings, villages, and cities, not only to fortify them against the ‘outer’ but to clearly demarcate the ‘castle’ and consolidate the sense of the ‘inner,’ has given rise to the development of a unique, hermetic world within these walls and cloisters, with the oppositional relationship between the tángwū and yuànzi at its core.

As historical sources indicate, the structural basis of Chinese architecture has always been the axial timber frame, and the tángwū is no different. Such a structural system is not really capable of producing large, complex buildings, and the simple, pure plan-form of the tángwū is an expression of this orderly, ‘modular’ structural system, rather than being expressive of any particular function. Though the use and scale of tángwū may vary, they all share the same basic essential characteristics: the orderly arrangement of columns, typically a single span in depth but sometimes more, an odd number of bays, an open ‘front’, and a closed ‘back’.

Elevations showing a range of *tángwū,* from the simplest three-bay pattern all the way up to nine and eleven bay examples.

The building of a tángwū involves first constructing a raised platform or podium, typically of compacted earth or rubble faced with stone, then erecting on it the building itself, with its entry and all openings in the long southern facade facing a courtyard or open area, blind rear and gable-end walls, and a hipped or gabled roof.

Cutaway perspective of a *tángwū,* showing the central *táng* ‘living’ area and *wòshì* ‘bedrooms’ to either side of it.

The fact that tángwū always have an odd number of bays is thought to have arisen both from the influence of yin-yang philosophical concepts, and also from the desire to grant the ‘chief’ or head of the household a physical position within the tángwū that gave full dignity and expression to the functional centrality of his role. The central bay of the tángwū occupied by the head is called the 堂 táng. The odd number of bays, with an equal number of bays (typically bedrooms, 臥室 wòshì) on either side of the central táng, the central entry steps leading to the táng, and the role of the táng as the ‘gatekeeper’ space which must be passed through to access the other areas of the building, all emphasise the centrality of the táng and the importance of the axis that runs through its centre, and give the tángwū as a whole a strong sense of overall symmetry.