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01 · Ancient & Classical World

Ancient Chinese

c. 1500 BCE–1800s

Timber halls of posts and beams under sweeping tiled roofs with upturned corners, joined by interlocking brackets.

Look for

Upturned eaves Dougong bracket Glazed tile roof
Foguang Temple, Mount Wutai, China: an example of Ancient Chinese architecture
Foguang Temple, Mount Wutai, China. Photo: Patrick20242023, CC BY-SA 4.0
Nanchan Temple, Mount Wutai, China
Nanchan Temple Mount Wutai, China · Patrick20242023, CC BY-SA 4.0
Pagoda of Fogong Temple, Yingxian, China
Pagoda of Fogong Temple Yingxian, China · Charlie fong, CC BY-SA 4.0
Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, Xi'an, China
Giant Wild Goose Pagoda Xi'an, China · Alex Kwok, CC BY-SA 3.0
Songyue Pagoda, Dengfeng, China
Songyue Pagoda Dengfeng, China · Siyuwj, CC BY-SA 4.0

what it is

Traditional Chinese buildings are timber frames of columns and beams on raised platforms of rammed earth or stone. Walls fill the gaps between columns and carry no roof weight. At the column tops sit dougong, clusters of interlocking wooden brackets that spread the load and let the eaves project far beyond the walls. Joints are mortise-and-tenon, without nails or glue. Tiled roofs have curved ridges and upturned corners. Buildings sit symmetrically around courtyards on a north-south axis, main halls facing south.

The Forbidden City in Beijing has 980 surviving buildings. Its largest, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, has a double-eaved hip roof (sloping on all four sides) of yellow glazed tiles, a form and color reserved for the emperor. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven is a round wooden hall with dark blue tiles, rebuilt after an 1889 fire. Foguang Temple's East Hall in Shanxi (857) is one of China's oldest timber buildings, and Pingyao's walled town keeps Ming and Qing courtyard houses.

how to spot one

Upturned eaves Roof edges, called eaves, that curve upward toward the corners. They are common on traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean temples, palaces and houses. Dougong bracket A set of interlocking wooden brackets stacked on a column to carry the roof's overhanging eaves. It is used in traditional Chinese temples and palaces and in Korean and Japanese buildings. Glazed tile roof A roof of clay tiles coated with a shiny, often colored glaze, with decorated tiles along the ridges. In imperial China, yellow glazed tiles were reserved for the emperor's buildings.

Also look for

CourtyardDeep eave overhangExposed structure

history

Rammed-earth palace foundations survive from the Shang dynasty (about 1600-1046 BCE), and bracket sets of the dougong type became widespread in the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BCE). Because early buildings were wooden, few survive. The oldest dated timber hall in China is the main hall of Nanchan Temple in Shanxi (782), from the Tang dynasty (618-907), and the Tang period also carried Chinese building methods to Japan and Korea.

In 1103 the Song court published the Yingzao Fashi, a building manual by the official Li Jie. It set eight standard grades of timber size and gave rules for brackets, carpentry, tiling and painting, with illustrations. The Ming Yongle Emperor moved the capital to Beijing and built the Forbidden City between 1406 and 1420, and the Temple of Heaven in 1420. The Qing dynasty issued a further official building code in 1734. The Forbidden City housed 24 Ming and Qing emperors before it became a museum in 1925.

where to find it

The Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven in Beijing, Foguang Temple in Shanxi, and the old town of Pingyao.

easy to confuse with

Hall of Supreme Harmony, Forbidden City, an example of Chinese Traditional Chinese Traditional Courtyard compounds under sweeping glazed tile roofs carried on interlocking bracket sets. Kinkaku-ji, an example of Japanese Traditional Japanese Traditional Timber frames, deep sheltering eaves, sliding paper screens, and verandas, all sized to the tatami mat.