Stylistic and historical development to 220 ce

Neolithic and Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 bce)

The best evidence for early architecture in northern China comes from Neolithic villages such as Banpo, near present-day Xi’an, discovered in 1953 and datable to the 5th–4th millennia bce, revealing building systems not yet traditionally Chinese. Two types of buildings predominated within a village surrounded by a deeply dug moat: circular buildings with conical roofs, built above ground; and square buildings with pyramidal roofs, which were semi-subterranean. Already, however, the thatched roofs were suspended by means of columns, beams, and raftering, while the wattle-and-daub walls were not weight-bearing, just as would be the case in later times. And, as at the Banshan Neolithic village in the 3rd millennium bce, cemeteries were already located in south-facing foothills to the north of the village, as was the ideal throughout much of later Chinese history.

Excavations of the Shang era at Luoyang, Zhengzhou, and Anyang have revealed an architecture that begins to take on traditional Chinese form: massive earthen walls surrounding emergent urban centres, rectilinear buildings set up on rammed-earth foundations (layers of earth pounded to stonelike hardness and durability), and postholes of timber buildings with wattle-and-daub walls (woven rods and twigs covered and plastered with clay) and thatched roofs. The largest building yet traced at Anyang is a timber hall about 30 metres (90 feet) long, the wooden pillars of which were set on stone socles, or bases, on a raised platform. Ordinary dwellings were partly sunk beneath ground level, as in Neolithic times, with deeper storage pits inside them. There is no sign of the structural use of brick or stone or of tile roofs in any of the Anyang sites. Along the banks of the Huan River to the northwest of modern Anyang, royal tombs consisted of huge, square, rammed-earth pits approached by two or four sloping ramps. Lined and roofed with timber, the tombs were sunk in the floor of the pit. Tomb walls and coloured impressions left on the earth by carved and painted timbers include zoomorphic motifs very similar to those on ritual bronze vessels (see metalwork: Non-Western). Traces of a painted clay wall found elsewhere at Anyang, in a royal stone- and jade-carving workshop, demonstrate that aboveground buildings were decorated with similar designs and indicate a uniformity of design principles and themes in virtually all media at that time, including ritual bronze decor.

The Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bce)

Remains of a number of Zhou cities have been discovered, among them capitals of the feudal states. They were irregular in shape and surrounded by walls of rammed earth. Some long defensive walls also have been located, the largest being one that protected the state of Qi from Lu to the south, stretching for more than 500 km (300 miles) from the Huang He to the sea. Chu had a similar wall along its northern frontier.

Foundations of a number of palace buildings have been found in the cities, including Fengchu and, at Huixian, the remains of a hall 26 metres (85 feet) square, which was used for ancestral rites in connection with an adjacent tomb—an arrangement that became common in the Han dynasty. An important late Zhou structure used for a number of functions in the conduct of state rituals and incorporating a complex range of symbolic numerical systems was the Spirit Hall (Mingtang), discussed in a variety of Zhou literature but not yet known for that period through excavations. Late Zhou texts also describe platforms or towers, tai, made of rammed earth and timber and used as watchtowers, as treasuries, or for ritual sacrifices and feasts, while pictures engraved or inlaid on late Zhou bronze vessels show two-story buildings used for this type of ritual activity. Some of these multistory buildings are now understood, through modern excavations of two- and three-story Qin and Han palaces and of state ritual halls at Xianyang, Xi’an, and Luoyang, to have been constructed around a large, raised, pounded-earth core that structurally supported upper building levels and galleries and into which surrounding lower-level chambers were inserted.

The origins of the Chinese bracketing system also are found on pictorial bronzes, showing a spreading block (dou) placed upon a column to support the beam above more broadly, and in depictions of curved arms (gong) attached near the top of the columns, parallel to the building wall, extending outward and up to help support the beam; however, the block and arms were not yet combined to create traditional Chinese brackets (dougong) or to achieve extension forward from the wall. Roof tiles replaced thatch before the end of the Western Zhou (771 bce), and bricks have been found from early in the Eastern Zhou.

The Qin (221–206 bce) and Han (206 bce–220 ce) dynasties

In 221 Qin Shihuangdi (“the First Sovereign Emperor of Qin”) put in place the elements that provided the foundation for the succeeding Han dynasty: he centralized the Chinese state and its legal system and standardized the systems of weights and measures and the Chinese writing system. Further, he consolidated many of the walls of northern China into an architectural network of barriers and beacon towers for rapid communication. From these towers, watchmen could identify suspicious military movement and relay the information across the entire length of the wall across north China in a single day.

While little except walls and tombs remains of the architecture of either the Qin or Han dynasties, much can be learned about Han architecture from historical writings and long descriptive poems, known as fu. Clearly this was an era of great palace building. Shihuangdi undertook the building of a vast palace, the Efang Gong or Ebang Gong, whose main hall was intended to accommodate 10,000 guests in its upper story. He also copied, probably at reduced scale, the palaces and pavilions of each of the feudal lords he had defeated; these buildings displayed an encyclopaedia of regional architectural styles, stretched more than 11 km (7 miles) along the Wei River, and were filled with local lords and ladies captured from the different states.

The first emperor’s tomb was part of a city of the dead that covered nearly 2 square km (0.75 square mile) and was surrounded by double walls, with numerous gates, corner towers, and a ceremonial palace. The mausoleum itself was surmounted by an artificial mound, a feature not known in the Shang or early Zhou and first found among the tombs of the 4th–3rd centuries bce near Jiangling in Hubei province. About 43 metres (141 feet) high, this tumulus was shaped like a triple-layered truncated pyramid symbolizing heaven, man, and earth. The tomb, which has not yet been excavated, reportedly featured a large chart of the heavens painted on its domed vault and a three-dimensional representation of the earth below, with rivers of liquid mercury driven by mechanical contrivances. Excavations around the tomb have uncovered a large protective terra-cotta “spirit army” of some 8,000 life-size warrior figures along with 400 horses and 100 chariots placed in battle formation in a series of pits beneath the nearby fields. Molded in separate sections, assembled, then fully painted, these warrior figures were executed in minute and realistic detail and provide evidence of an early naturalistic sculptural tradition that was scarcely imagined by scholars before their discovery in 1974. For the heads, some 30 different models were used, and each was hand-finished to give further variety. In 1982 a pair of precisely engineered bronze replicas (104 cm [40 inches] high) of the imperial chariot, with considerable gold and silver inlay, was excavated, each with a charioteer and four horses.

The main audience hall of the Western Han Weiyang palace was said to have been about 120 metres (390 feet) long by 35 metres (115 feet) deep, possibly smaller than its largest Qin predecessor yet much larger than its equivalents in the Beijing palace today. From the Zhou dynasty (1046–255 bce) through the Yuan (1206–1368 ce), no architectural structure called forth more intense consideration than the Spirit Hall, or Mingtang, which was the predecessor of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven. The site of the Han ritual hall, in the southern suburbs of Han dynasty Chang’an, was excavated in 1956–57. Translating traditional ritual values into symbolic architecture, the Mingtang was surrounded by an outer circular moat and set on a circular foundation (the two circles together forming a disk, or bi, symbolic of heaven) that was further enclosed within an intermediate rectilinear colonnade (symbolic of earth). The three-story hall itself (the number three signifying heaven, man, and earth) was built around a raised earthen core. It is thought to have been a composite ritual structure that included a royal academy on the first floor; a second floor divided into nine zones, corresponding to the four seasons and the “five phases” theory of change, with five inner shrines and with outer spaces for monthly ritual offerings; and a third-floor central hall surrounded by a terrace (lingtai, or “spirit platform”) for observation of the heavens and regulation of the calendar.

The Han palaces were set about with tall timber towers (lou) and brick or stone towers (tai) used for a variety of purposes, including the display and storage of works of art. Ceramic representations of Han architecture provide the first direct evidence of true bracketing, with simple brackets projecting a single step forward from the wall (and sometimes several steps upward from the wall) in order to support the roof projection.

Han tombs are among the most elaborate ever constructed in China. In some localities they are of timber, but more often they are of brick or stone, divided into several chambers, and covered with a corbeled vault or, more rarely, a true arched vault. The tombs of the Han emperors were enclosed in gigantic earthen mounds that are still visible today, but some royal tombs began the later practice of burial in hollowed-out natural hills. Many Han tombs were decorated with wall paintings, with more permanent and expensive stone reliefs, or with stamped or molded bricks.

The most remarkable excavated tomb of the period belonged to the wife of a mid-level aristocrat, one of three family tombs of the governor of Changsha found in a suburb of that southern city, Mawangdui, and dating from 168 bce or shortly after. Small in scale but richly equipped and perfectly preserved, the wooden tomb consists of several outer compartments for grave goods tightly arranged around a set of four nested lacquered coffins. An outer layer of sticky white kaolin clay prevented moisture from penetrating the tomb, and an inner layer of charcoal fixed all the available oxygen within a day of burial, so the deceased (Xin Zhui, or Lady Dai, the governor’s wife) was found in a near-perfect state of preservation. Included among the grave goods, which came with a written inventory providing contemporaneous terminology, are the finest caches yet discovered of early Chinese silks (gauzes and damasks, twills and embroideries, including many whole garments) and lacquerware (including wood-, bamboo-, and cloth-cored examples), together with a remarkable painted banner that might have been carried by the shaman in the funerary procession.