[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Basic Ideas ] [ Temples and Palaces ] [ Chinese Roofs ] [ Forbidden City ] [ Great Wall ] [ Inside the City ]

    There is no architectural difference between a Taoist, Confucian, or Buddhist temple. The Chinese built them all with the same basic ground principal and construction as secular buildings. Beginning in the Song dynasty, a traditionally built Chinese building stands on a raised platform. An elaborate set of brackets and wooden columns laid on stone bases on the platform carries the weight of the heavy tiled roof. The walls are made of light material and bear little weight. There was only one entrance to the building, always located on the southern side.

   The Chinese painted the wood inside of the building for protective and decorative reasons. The walls and columns, if not carved, were usually painted red, the platform colored white, the roof tiles of the yellow or green, and finally the brackets would be colored green and blue. The Imperial Palace in Beijings great Forbidden City shares its place-style architecture as well as decorative features with the Temple of Confucius in Qufu (both built during the Ming Dynasty), and the Song Dynasty temple of Jinci, near Taiyuan.

    Some fabulous examples of Chinese architecture are the few remaining Buddhist temples. Unfortunately, the Chinese tore down many for urban development spaces or they just fell apart due to years of neglect. The tower of one remaining Yung-ning-su dynasty (6th century) temple near Toyang is nearly 400 feet high which was erected in the. However, there is not much information that available about these towers.

    What little information is available indicates that the most distinctive kinds of Buddhist buildings in China are the stupa or pagoda. Originally made in India, these buildings symbolize the relationship between heaven and earth was mainly used to house sacred objects. As for the architectural style, these temples take the form of a storied tower, or, more rarely, an upturned bowl. As the centuries passed, however, the shape of these temples took new forms. In the second and third century, the Chinese constructed them mostly of wood. Their shape took the form of a tetragon during the 10th Century Sung dynasty. In the next dynasty, Tang decided to have the stupa towers shaped into an octagon. The number of stories varied with each of the buildings. The height decreased regularly from the base to the summit, but everything else remained the same.

Bibliography: