Huizhou Architecture

Huizhou, former name of Huangshan City, was situated in the south of Anhui, it had a little bigger area than today's Huangshan City, including Jixi County, Jingde County of Anhui and Wuyuan County of Jiangxi. Because of it's long history and glorious culture, it had formed its own nice and elegant architecture style, known as Huizhou Architecture.

In Huizhou, well-preserved ancient architecture is abundant: houses, archways, temples, steles, pavilions, towers, tombs and so on, from those constructions we can easily find the belief, custom and world view of former people of this area. Among them residences and archways are prominent.

Influenced by local geography, economy, traditional concept and custom, Huizhou Architecture features Feng Shui(Chinese geomancy), high white-and-black house and Huizhou Four Carvings.

The priority would be given to Feng Shui (Chinese Geomancy) when choosing a site and planning the layout for a village as well as a house. Fengshui is based on Yin-Yang, Wu-Xing and the Eight Diagrams theory. As a part of nature, men is influenced by environment. Feng Shui is a combination of town-planning, environmental improvement, architecture and interior decoration. Feng Shui practically focus on choosing location for residence, business, even tomb, as well as methods to improve their original environmental quality.
In Huizhou, under the guidance of Feng Shui, the site of village or residence is prudently chosen, houses' gateway should avoid facing chimney or road, otherwise, a mirrors or scissor would be hung on the door's lintel, to ward off evils; water is symbol of fortune and luck. Fireproofing and guard against theft are also major factors to be considered. That's why villages is usually sited near streams, lakes or rivers, and houses have high walls.

Houses in Huizhou are dominated by white and black. The wall is white washed, the tile roof is black. Local people prefer simple and impressive color rather than florid color to beautify their residences, seek the harmony with surrounding green trees, lush bamboos, clear streams. The wall is higher than its roof, preventing fire from spreading in case a house catch fire, so it's also called fireproofing wall. Another name is horse-head wall because of the shape of the slim protruding part near the eave. Another function of the high wall is to preclude thief from climbing in, addition to the high wall, people tend not to open window on the wall, windows usually are small and high if any. Windows are replaced by Tianjing (Sky Well) which can admit daylight and fresh air instead.

Most owners of those houses were farmers and merchants, the house is usually small or medium size. According to the rule in ancient China, the higher the the social status is, the bigger the size of house. So the merchants were not allowed to build big residences even though they were rich enough for they were at the bottom of the social status, even lower than farmers, craftsmen, let alone officials. Farmers were not able to afford big-sized dwellings. So rich merchants spent a lot of money decorating their houses with delicate carvings, they were wood carving, bamboo carving, stone carving and brick carving. Carving skills are well developed, those four kind of carvings are known as Huizhou Four Carvings. Carvings are plentiful on houses, clan temples and archways, etc.

Another highlight of Huizhou Architecture is archway(Paifang) that's peculiar to China, abundant and well-preserved in Huizhou, for detailed information on archway, please visit Tangyue Archway Group.