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Ancient Shanxi houses strong yet elaborate
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IN northern China’s Shanxi Province, one of the world’s major coal-producing regions, residential dwellings are normally one of two types — cave houses or courtyard houses.
In the mountainous areas, people have been living in yaodong, or cave houses for centuries. In the relatively flat areas, people have built brick-and-tile courtyard houses with unique local characteristics.
Like most courtyard houses one can find in northern China, the Shanxi courtyard house is also an enclosed rectangular plot with buildings along three or four sides of the plot.
It usually has one outer and one inner courtyard. The outer courtyard, stretching east to west in a rectangular shape, situates in front with a gate built on the southeast corner.
The inner courtyard is much bigger, with a main south-facing house sitting to the north of it.
However, during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the local merchants, also known as Jin merchants (Jin is an abbreviation standing for Shanxi), began to thrive. Later, they built many “grand courtyard houses,” some featuring dozens of layers of courtyards.
For example, the grand courtyard of Qiao family, located in the Jinzhong basin, boasts six large and 20 small courtyards. Covering a total area of more than 8,700 square meters, the grand courtyard contains 313 houses.
But both simple courtyard houses and those grand courtyard houses in Shanxi have some common characteristic.
First, they all have high walls. As the northern province is inflicted by sandstorms in spring and icy winds from the northwest in winter, high walls offer protection to the courtyard houses.
Also, those super-rich merchants needed high walls to turn their houses into “castles,” so they could deter burglary attempts and fend off possible invasions.
Second, the courtyard houses in Shanxi were all solidly built, with thick timber pillars, stone-brick walls and tiled roofs. The owners all expected them to last for generations.
Third, Shanxi courtyard houses are all richly decorated with exquisite and elaborate wood, stone and brick carvings.
Though wood carvings are the smallest in number, they are usually placed at the most prominent sites in the house. Outlined in gold, the carvings often catch people’s attention with their exceptionally fine craftsmanship.
People can find the stone carvings at the pillar bases, railings and gate piers in such houses. Most of them feature intaglio patterns. Most striking, however, are the ubiquitous brick carvings in Shanxi courtyard houses. They can be found on roof ridges, decorated walls, screen walls, shrines, gable wall heads and gate towers.
They can also be divided into brick sculptures, relief carvings, kernel carvings and altorilievo carvings. Most of the brick carvings depict themes such as folk or historical stories, flowers, plants, common and supernatural animals and figures.
These unique Shanxi courtyard houses are valuable for studying northern China’s social, cultural and economic development, including the local people’s customs, lifestyles and religious activities in ancient times, particularly during the Qing Dynasty.
Today, such houses, especially the grand courtyard houses, have not only become a major destination attracting thousands of tourists every year, but also favorite settings for many Chinese movies and TV plays.
In 2008, four such grand courtyard houses in Shanxi, including the Qiao family’s one, were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List, an inventory of those properties which a country intends to consider for nomination.
墀头 (chì tóu)
Gable Wall Head
Chitou, or gable wall head, is a projection on the top of a gable wall, which stretches out over a pillar to help support extending eaves.
It usually consists of three parts, including a series of steps retreating from the top downwards. The top of the gable wall head, called qiangyanban or eave cornice, is the largest step of the series and is often decorated with elaborate brick carvings. The other steps of the construction part are also made of bricks and brick carvings.
In the past, such carvings of a courtyard house were often used to reflect the house owner’s social status.
Chitou is an iconic element of construction of many ancient Chinese flush-gable-roof buildings. For other ancient Chinese structures, such as hipped roof, gable and hip roof or overhanging gable roof buildings, their gable wall heads don’t have the top part as the ones built for the flush-gable-roof buildings.
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