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Page 5
Passing into China we encounter a civilization whose antiquity rivals
that of India. However, there are no very ancient remains there. But
there is documentary evidence that the Chinese, several centuries before
the Christian era, built from the same designs that they use to-day.
Architecture being the expression of the needs, instincts, character and
traditions of a people, and the Chinese having in no way modified their
manner of living or their traditions, we can easily understand why their
architecture has undergone no modifications.
The Great Wall, running along the north of China proper, with a length
of fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred miles, is the only Chinese work
that can boast of its antiquity. It is attributed to the emperor Tsin
Hoang Ti [Che Hoang-te], who reigned in the third century before our
era, and who is said to have employed in its construction five or six
million men. The foundations are of hewn stone, the rest is of brick
faced with smoothly-joined stones. The wall is battlemented, flanked
with towers, and is provided at certain intervals with fortified gates.
It is broad enough for six horsemen to ride abreast on it.
Among the great works of the Chinese, mention is also made of the bridge
of Loyau at Sueno chou Fou; it is built over the point of an arm of the
sea and comprises two hundred and fifty piles made of material of
enormous bulk. The roadway is formed with single blocks of granite, and
is guarded on each side by a balustrade.
There are other bridges raised on vaulted arches. Others, still, are
decorated with triumphal arches, such as that of the Province of
Kiang-Nan; and again there are others built of wood, like the bridge of
King-Chou-Fou, with the flooring supported by iron chains fastened to
rocks.
The cities are generally laid out on a square plan with the angles
directed as far as possible toward the four cardinal points, and the
predominance of a single architectural type imparts a certain monotony
to the streets. The enclosing walls are flanked with towers and their
gates are surmounted by lofty structures which include an arsenal and a
guard-room. Besides the temples and commemorative monuments erected on
the same plan as the temples, at the entrance to certain streets and
before certain edifices monuments in the form of gates are to be seen.
These structures, called _pai l�ou_, are nothing else than triumphal
arches raised to the memory of emperors, generals, mandarins and all
those who have rendered important services to the country. The bases of
these arches are of stone, the rest is made of wood; they have a single
bay, or one principal bay with two smaller ones, and the top is in the
form of a Chinese roof.
The palaces present a succession of spacious courts surrounded by
buildings and are entered through gates in the form of triumphal arches.
Each separate portion of the structure is destined to a special use. The
women and children are usually relegated to the rear court.
The houses have one or two stories; their dimensions are regulated by
law, according to the rank and condition of the owner, and, as in all
Oriental dwellings, there are but few openings on the street.
While the Hindoos built with enduring materials, the Chinese generally
used brick and wood. The explanation of this fact is to be sought not so
much in their fear of the earthquakes with which they are constantly
threatened as in their narrow-mindedness and lack of ambition; they saw
no reason why an edifice should outlast the generation for which it was
constructed.
Judging from the ruins of Persepolis, the Medes and Persians must have
attained to a high degree of civilization in the time of Cyrus, but we
have no authentic records concerning their civil architecture. Their art
is derived from the Babylonians and Assyrians, from whom they must have
largely borrowed their customs.
The Assyrian palaces consisted of three wholly distinct groups of
buildings, three divisions which we find exactly reproduced to-day in
the seigneurial and princely dwellings of Persia, India and Turkey.
First, there was the seraglio, or the palace properly so-called, which
comprised the reception-halls and the men's apartments, and which is
known now throughout the East under the name of _selamlik_; then came
the harem containing the private rooms where the master saw his wives
and children with their guards of eunuchs and their throngs of
attendants; and lastly, there was the _khan_, a cluster of dependent
structures including servants' quarters and out-buildings. In princely
palaces each of these divisions included several courts, and the whole
was disposed around a principal court, the court of honor. The entire
assemblage of edifices was nothing more than one vast ground-floor. "The
design followed in the arrangement of these composite dwellings," it has
been said, is almost naive in its simplicity: the plan is merely divided
into as many right parallelograms as there are services to be provided
for, and these rectangles are so disposed as to touch along one side or
at one of the angles, but they never interfere with or command one
another; they are contiguous or adjacent but always independent. Thus
each of the three divisions (seraglio, harem and khan) presents a
rectangular figure, and each borders one side of the principal court,
which is neutral ground,--the common centre around which all are
grouped. The same principle of arrangement is applied to the
subdivisions of the great quarters; the latter are composed of smaller
rectangles distributed about an uncovered space, on which each apartment
opens, with no direct communication between adjoining rooms through
partition-walls. In this way all the sections of an edifice were
clustered together and at the same time isolated; and each of these
sections had its special use and its pre-assigned occupants.[2]
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