为什么研究中国建筑.docVIP

1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS Early Origin Among the family of architecture of the world, Chinese architecture may be considered an independent branch by itself. Its history is as long as the history of Chinese civilization. From every source of information-literary, graphical and exemplary- there can be gathered convincing evidences testifying to the fact that the Chinese people have always employed an indigenous system of construction and a conception of planning which have retained their principal characteristics from the earliest times till the present day. Over the vast area from Xinjiang to the Northeast, from Inner Mongolia to the south sea coast, the same system of construction and planning is prevalent. Beyond china, in Korea and Japan in the east and Vietnam in the south, the same system of construction and similar plan arrangements are much used. And these have all along been the countries whose people have established very intimate contacts with the Chinese for thousands of years. The ability of this system to perpetuate itself for over four thousand years over such a vast area and still remain a living architecture, and to retain its principal characteristics in spite of repeated and continuous foreign influences, hostile or friendly, economical, cultural or military, is a phenomenon comparable only to the continuity of the civilization of which it forms an integral part. Neolithic Remains Excavation in 1954 at the village of Banpo, near Xi’an, led to the discovery of a number of pits in the loess stratum. They were identified as remains of human habitations of the Neolithic period. Along the periphery of one of the larger pits of an oblong plan, of which only a portion now remains and estimated to have a major axis of about 20 meters long, is a low earthen wall in which are a row of holes containing charred studs of logs, evidently the lower ends of posts of a house that was later destroyed by fire. It is the remains of the earliest houses known in china