J Hous and the Built Environ (2008) 23:353366 DOI 10.

1007/s10901-008-9123-z POLICY AND PRACTICE

Boundaries and openings: spatial strategies in the Chinese dwelling

Xiao Hu

Received: 29 March 2007 / Accepted: 14 March 2008 / Published online: 12 September 2008 Springer 2008

Abstract Dwelling implies the establishment of a meaningful relationship between people and a given environment. Through physical spaces, people identify and orient themselves by symbolically expressing the meaning of socialcultural behavior. This paper examines the spatial meanings in the traditional Chinese family by analyzing the placement and arrangement of walls and courtyards. Specically, this paper studies how physical space was dened and developed within the Chinese family by the spatial articulation of human relationships and the functions of daily life and how these spatial arrangements reinforced family hierarchies through purposeful separation and togetherness. The ndings reveal that through binding together the family relationship and spatial concerns, Confucian discourses and practice were attached to the daily life of every Chinese. In addition, this study indicates that the primary concern in a Chinese house was not togetherness but separateness. Keywords Chinese family Confucianism Wall Courtyard Relationship

1 Introduction Comprehending meanings is a basic instinct of the soul and a primal need of people living in a meaningful world. The range of existing meanings can be found in a persons daily life. Thus, a dwelling implies the establishment of a meaningful relationship between man and a given environment. Schulz (1985, p. 13) observes that the relationship consisted of an act of identication, that is, a sense of belonging to a certain place. Man nds himself when he settles somewhere and his being-in-the-world is thereby determined. Humans can comprehend meanings through symbols, which give substance to and embody abstract concepts and ideas to turn the unknowable into the knowable, the intangible into the tangible, and the intricate into the simple.

X. Hu (&) University of Idaho, 1415 S Hawthorne Dr., Apt.#204, Moscow, ID 83843, USA e-mail: arch_hx@yahoo.com

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Architecture can be considered a system of symbols. By the availability of certain materials and the constraints and capabilities of certain technologies, human beings can construct a space, which is a shelter not only for physical living, but also for intrapsychic peace. Architecture is more than art, because it produces the domains of human society, separating the inner and the outer. More importantly, it produces a certain order that helps people discover their social, economic and political positions in the world. Representing humans being-in-the-world, the space becomes a human space, a meaningful place to people. Therefore, only when someone reveals the meaning of a place through symbolic expressions, and makes other people understand it, does the space become meaningful to everyone. Rapoport (1969, p. 4749) argues that the form of houses, representing the aims and desires of a unied social or cultural group for an ideal environment, reveals the meaning of socialcultural purposes by symbolic expression. Every socialcultural meaning in architecture is expressed by a group of special architectural languages. Schulz (1985, p. 15) poses that the meaning of space has two fundamental aspectsidentication and orientation. Through identication, humans possess a world, and thus their identities. A persons social identity consists of an interiorization of understood things, and the development of identity depends upon being open to the environment which surrounds humans. On the other hand, orientation refers to spatial organization, which admits actions, and hence allows life to take place. Symbolism was an intrinsic part of ancient Chinese culture, creating the dialogue between man and buildings. Semiotics was employed in Chinese ancient architecture in order to make buildings more easily understood. This paper is a general comprehensive study of the meaning of walls and wall-enclosed spaces in Chinese courtyard dwellings. The primary sources of the dwelling patterns analyzed in this paper are the authors own observations, survey, map and photos taken during a eldtrip to the north and southwest of China during the period 19982000. In addition, this paper employs ndings and conclusions from the published research literature focusing on Chinese traditional architecture, philosophies and family systems.

2 Confucian society Over thousands of years, Chinese society had been structured around not only strict laws and strong military powers but also an extremely rigid social hierarchy. A synthesis of hierarchical philosophies and ideologies resulting from Confucianism and its continual development pervaded every corner of Chinese society and established a rigidly patriarchal and patrilineal society lasting more than 2,000 years. A core concept in the Confucian social paradigm was Li (propriety, or rite), which referred to the principle of social order and dened the correct, stylized behaviors attached to social roles. According to Lin (1938, p. 225), Li included folkways, religious customs, festivals, laws, dress, food, and housing, more or less what the term ethnology covers. Confucianism claimed that Respectfulness without the rules of propriety becomes laborious bustle; carefulness without the rules of propriety becomes timidity; boldness without the rules of propriety becomes insubordination; straightforwardness without the rules of propriety becomes rudeness[It] is by the rules of propriety that the character is established.(Confucius 1997) Li was the social grammar used whenever human beings were in contact with each other. It provided a pattern to dene social roles and to classify appropriate behaviors. Through the channel of Li, human beings could follow the law of Heaven and direct themselves to proper interpersonal relationships. Therefore, the duties of

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Li were the main principles of human life, strengthening the conformity of social orders and formulating the correctness of behaviors. To cultivate the proper approach to Li is a means of controlling and relating interpersonal relationships. Everyone was required to adhere to the responsibilities inherent in the Five Fundamental Human Relationships (Wu Lun), which existed between sovereign and ministers, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and those in the intercourse between friends. Based on the ve relationships, the so-called Three Bonds (San Gang) emerged, which referred to the three authorities of sovereign over minister, father over son and husband over wife. Obviously, the Five Fundamental Relationships and Three Bonds underscored the hierarchical relationships as an inviolable principle for maintaining the stability of social orders, which resulted from the rigidly prescribed rules of conduct, Li. Thus, the basic feature of the Confucian social paradigm was the obedience of the people in the subordinate group to the people who outranked them in the social structure. A perfect person in the Confucian view should exert virtue (de) in society, loyalty (zhong) to the sovereign and lial piety (xiao) to ones parents. There was an ideological centralism in the Confucianism about the roles of sovereigns, fathers, husbands, older brothers and older friends. A sovereign, the emperor, was the center of an entire country; a father, also being a husband, was the center of a family; the oldest brother became the head of the family when his father passed away; and the oldest friend was the center of a social circle. Lin (1935, p. 172) stresses that Chinese people were family-minded, not social-minded. From the Confucian perspective, the nation was considered to consist of individual families. There was a direct connection between family and the nation, expressed in sayings such as when the family is orderly, then the nation is at peace. The Chinese character of nation in fact consists of two words, guo jia, or state-family. Such a system was consistent based on the rmly held assumption that a nation of good husbands, fathers, sons, wives and brothers should be a good nation. As a result, in Confucian society, the primary concern was not the peoples social obligations to their nation but the social obligations to their families. The vast geographic extent of China made it necessary to rely on well organized Confucian intellectuals as selected administrative ofcials to help the emperors rule the land. The intellectuals deep knowledge of old literatures provided the emperors with the Heaven-approved authority to lead the government of the known world. The hierarchical social structure helped common people accept the status quo imposed by subordinates. Historically, although some occasional revolts occurred against the leadership, there was no revolt against the system that established and maintained the hierarchical structure. The ruling class obviously found that Confucianisms emphasis on duty and its carefully dened human relations was benecial to maintaining a stable social order. In this order, everybody was assigned a status and was expected to fulll the corresponding responsibility of that status. Confucianism has been the ofcial orthodox and state ideology since 200 B.C.E. Thus, for over two thousand years, Confucianism has provided an elaborate set of codes that prescribed peoples conduct and also dened social status and relations. Ancient Chinese architecture inevitably became a medium through which to express Confucian concepts in Chinese society. The architectural means employed to make human beings being-in-the world an accomplished fact referred to the built forms and organized spaces (Schulz 1985, p. 20). Built forms were always understood in terms of standings, risings and openings. In Chinese dwellings, the timber-framed structure of standings denoted the relationship to the earth; the curved rising roofs interacted with the sky; and the walls and openings expressed the relationships between interior and exterior, which

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referred to the human relationships. Translating Confucian ideology into the form of space to deal with the interiorexterior relationships was the primary way to concretize the language of architecture as a formal articulation, reecting Confucian social structure.

3 Hierarchy at home The traditional Chinese family is the result of a long historical developmentthe basic rules of patrilineal descent and surname exogamy, the practice of venerating and sacricing to ancestors, and the moral value of lial piety. A family was founded by the marriage of a man and woman; it was enlarged by the children to whom they gave birth or whom they adopted. However, a Chinese family traditionally comprised a larger group of people who were related by blood, marriage or adoption, living and managing their nances together. Within this family, the males were all agnatic kin. Sons continued to live in their fathers house with their wives, who had been brought in from other families. Daughters stayed in the family only as long as they were unmarried and would move out and join their husbands families when they grew up. A Chinese family usually shared living space and nances for a single objective: sustaining the family wealth and social status and developing the family size. Lin (1938, p. 176) indicated that the extended family system took the place of religions by giving humans a sense of social survival and family continuity. An extended family satised humans craving for immortality, and through ancestral worship, the sense of immortality became very vivid. However, the family wealth determined the formation and maintenance of this ideal family form. The majority of poor peasant families struggling for survival in the countryside rarely possessed sufcient resources to accommodate their extended families. But they kept making attempts to establish such an extended family once they obtained the means to do so. A Chinese family was a well organized patriarchal hierarchy, with the prime institutionalized authority being vested in the senior-most male. The oldest male member, or in some cases female, in the family usually served as the family head and had the ultimate authority in all family matters. He/She ofciated in all traditional ceremonies such as ancestor worship, marriage and funerals and was entitled to overall family property and to its disposal. Baker (1979, p. 15) found that the family pecking-order resulted from three factors: generation, age and gender. In a Chinese family, senior generations were superior to junior generations, older people superior to younger ones, and men superior to women. Therefore, in addition to the ve fundamental human relationships (Wu Lun), there were complicated subordinate relationships. For example, everyone in the family except the senior-most male owed obedience to the senior-most female because of her status of highest generation; the youngest son owed obedience to his parents, elder brother and elder brothers wives because of his being lowest in age; all daughters owed obedience to their brothers because of their gender. The hierarchical order was the only law that sustained the peace and the functionality of a family, and it organized all household activities. The family system taught all children the rst lessons in social obligations between people, the necessity of mutual adjustment, self-control, courtesy, the sense of duty, respect for elders, and the fulllment of obligations and display of gratitude towards parents. In addition, this family system acted as a primary force to enable Chinese people to survive and regenerate their families through political upheaval. The extended family became an incentive to quantitative reproduction. For a family to survive, it needed more male offspring. And the ancestral worship made it impossible to forget the primacy of ones

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lineage. Therefore, the Chinese families retained the same basic form throughout various cultural and political changes.

4 Walls and wall-enclosed courtyards To settle in a place meant to delimit an area and implied a study of a given natural environment. A dwelling provided a place of encounter, where people exchange ideas, products, and sentiments. Meeting implied togetherness, which referred not only to people living together, but also to gathering the surroundings and the dwelling. The form of a residential house was the logical consequence of the needs of the family hierarchical order and served as a symbol to describe and spread the hierarchical doctrine. According to Rapoport (1969, p. 46), the house is an institution, not just a structure, created for a complex set of purposes. Harmony and ritual generated the layout and the form of the most-used dwelling form in Chinaa symmetrical and axial wall-enclosed courtyard house. A multiple-courtyards composition could accommodate an extended family with more than one hundred members in four or ve generations. Only this wall-segregated space could offer the possibility of maintaining individual privacy among all the family members living together. The Chinese courtyard dwelling may be traced back to as early as the 11th Century B.C.E. A quadrangular building discovered at Qishan, Shaanxi Province has a sophisticated ground plan containing rectangular structures arranged around three sets of open spaces (Liu 2000, p. 7). This three-courtyard composition was considered the earliest pattern of Chinese courtyard dwelling (Fig. 1). Since then, the courtyard dwelling became the main dwelling pattern for the Chinese people and remained so until the introduction of Western architecture in the later 19th Century. For over 3,000 years, the Chinese courtyard dwelling retained largely the same characteristics, materials and principles, in spite of minor adjustments due to technological developments, political changes and different geographic conditions. Unlike its Western counterparts, Chinese society enjoyed a long history of feudalism and similar values and lifestyles under the inuence of Confucianism. Hence, it is hard to distinguish Chinese dwellings from one period to another and people throughout China applied the same principles and visions to build their dwellings. In ancient times, Chinese people tended to isolate themselves from the outside unstable world and its misfortunes, making their happiness in life depend entirely upon their inward state. The inner courtyards satised this demand for an inward life, especially during wartime (Liu 1989, p. 164). As Chinese people were family-minded rather than socialminded, there was no need for public spirit or civic consciousness in Confucian society. The social relationship with strangers was not included in the Five Fundamental Relationships and it was not clearly dened. A Chinese courtyard dwelling was a wall-enclosed castle, in which there was the greatest extent of communal cooperation and mutual help, while outside of which there was cold indifference towards others, and it was fortied against the world (Lin 1938, p. 180). The wall acted as the boundary separating the inside world of greatest cooperation and the outside world of indifference. Walls of various types and sizes were a pervasive component of the Chinese residential environment. Zhu (2004, p. 46) stressed that the wall was a key element in the formation of space in the Chinese conception. The exterior wall dened the boundaries of the domain of a family by differentiating the center of the known environment from

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358 Fig. 1 The oor plan of the three-courtyard dwelling discovered at Qishan. From: Liu 2000, p. 7

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the unknown frightening world around. Domains functioned as potential places for peoples actions. When thinking of their homes, people primarily imagined such domains as courtyards, the main hall, bedrooms, and kitchen, or as household activities occurring in a spatial domaineating in the main hall, playing in courtyards, or conversing in reading rooms. In addition, the psychological domain of the family was also determined by the location of the exterior walls. Any outward movement was hindered by walls and structures. As a result, an inward-looking courtyard was symbolic of the coherence of the family. Within the exterior wall, all family members should take care of each other, and this mutual helpfulness was developed to a very high degree. For example, a well-placed and successful man would make a greater contribution than his customary equal share of household expenses. A disgrace or outrage caused by family members misconduct might be publicized within the family, but would be well concealed from the outsiders beyond the exterior wall. In Chinese courtyard dwellings, buildings or structures also acted as walls. For example, a building for the servants living quarters was commonly placed on the periphery, with

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windows and doors opening towards the inside and separating the inside and outside world as a section of the exterior wall. In fact, all buildings and structures in a dwelling complex functioned like walls to dene boundaries and domains. Hence, walls in this paper also include those buildings and structures, called wall-functioned structures. Ancient Chinese people believed that the Yin and Yang, two basic components of the universe, created the ultimate harmony when both were in perfect proportion or balance. An open space dened by walls/wall-functioned structures would form a courtyard space, which was a key link to inspire the movement between Yin and Yang. Buildings and structures were solid and man-made, seen as the force of Yang, while courtyards were void and natural, considered a Yin force. Hence, a movement between courtyards and buildings represented the interaction between Yin and Yang. When a resident stood in his courtyard, as if he stood in the universe, he could be in touch with the sun, fresh air, winds, rainwater, his family, and even his gods. The courtyard indeed was the mediating point between human and nature, public and private, open and closed, solid and void, interior and exterior, and safe and unsafe. Only by communication with nature could humans nd out the order of nature and nally be in perfect harmony with nature. Hence, Chinese people tended to make an inner garden in their courtyard, in order to bring nature within the walls and the wall-functioned buildings. With courtyards dividing a potentially large and impersonal space into small, comparable spaces, people could live in, comprehend, and modify their residential spaces. In a larger spatial environment, the quadrangular buildings and walls dened the boundaries of the courtyard, making the sky the roof and the ground the oor. Hence, the wall-enclosed space could be regarded as an imaginary room, an interior outside space. In addition, the perception of safety was generated by the wall-enclosed space and was enhanced by a series of wall-enclosed spaces (Xu 1990, p. 92). The inner spatial perception could be extended from an interior room to an exterior courtyard space. As a result, a group of courtyard complexes, which were clustered in the longitudinal axis and horizontal axis with their own attachments in different sizes or shapes, could be considered a large spatial unit (Fig. 2). In a residential house, only through being encircled by walls and wall-functioned structures, could a void space be identied and dened. Otherwise, only with courtyard space at the center and the walls or wall-functioned structures at four sides, could the substantial spaces be connected to each other and nd an immanent order (Fig. 3). This spatial interpenetration was an exact reection of the interplay between the Yin and Yang. In this respect, the courtyard provided a wonderful place where binary pairs of opposite spatial objectswalls/wall-functioned structures and open spacesexisted together in unity and conformity and then reached a perfect balance. The direct spatial movement within a courtyard composition only happened via walls and the courtyards enclosed by walls: from the interior through walls to a courtyard and from a courtyard through walls to the exterior. Every spatial movement beyond a courtyard composition must occur through wall-enclosed spaces and walls: from the interior via courtyards and walls to the exterior. Courtyards and walls became the medium and interposition of interior and exterior space (Fig. 4). That is, only through walls or wall-functioned structures could people experience the transition from the interior to the exterior and vice versa. For example, when entering a twocourtyard dwelling, a person would need to go through the entrance, the rst wallfunctioned structure, to reach the front courtyard and pass through the second door/ front building, another wall-functioned structure to reach the main courtyard

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Fig. 2 A courtyard composition could be regarded as a large spatial unit, which was formed by walls and wall-divided courtyard spaces

composition (Fig. 5). He would experience a series of spatial transitions between the exterior to the interior: outside street (exterior)entrance (interior)entrance courtyard (exterior)front door/building (interior)front courtyard (exterior)the main gate (interior)main courtyard (exterior)main hall (interior). In Chinese houses, courtyards and walls were usually of different sizes, especially along the longitudinal axis. As a result, going through a series of courtyards and walls was a spatial adventure with alternate innerouter, bigsmall, longitudinallatitudinal, primarysecondary, and openclosed spatial changes, and an array of spatial implications as well as spatial indications. As the courtyard space extended, the alternating spatial experience of the interiorexterior repeated itself. As a result of the reciprocity of interior and exterior spaces in the courtyard, Chinese houses demonstrated the two following basic characteristics: 1. In any residential building, even if it was large, the interior space was simple. The oor plan was never separated into intricate spaces, as was generally the case in Western houses. The wall-enclosed space, the courtyard, was the most important focus in Chinese dwellings, not the interior space. 2. The wall of a building, or the curtain to use a better term, was not used for supporting the roof. Thus the building facade was exible enough to arrange doors, windows and grilles, bringing the courtyard space inside, and creating a exible treatment of interior space.

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Fig. 3 The relationship inside the courtyard composition unit between walls or wall-functioned structures and open spaces. According to Between Yin and Yang, one creates the other, in fact, the open space and wall-enclosed space also create one other

Fig. 4 Direct spatial changes only happened inside the courtyard composition. Every spatial change beyond a courtyard composition must have occurred through the courtyard. The courtyard was the medium and interposition

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Fig. 5 The spatial transitions between the interior and exterior in a courtyard dwelling. The building pattern is the oor plan of a Beijing Siheyuan house cited in Lius book (2000, p. 319)

5 Spatial hierarchy at home The courtyard space made it possible for every subordinate familyevery sons families to live in a relatively independent and integrated space. In fact, most of the rooms in Chinese courtyard dwellings, except the kitchen and the main hall, had never been differentiated according to functional uses. There was no designated room acting as a bedroom, storeroom or reading room specically. Every room was designed to accommodate multiple purposes. Subordinate halls could serve to accommodate different people. For example, a hall previously used by an unmarried daughter might serve as the fathers reading room after the daughter had married out. The exibility of utilization resulted from the fact that the spatial focus in Chinese dwellings was put mainly on the courtyard space instead of on the interior arrangement. Human togetherness implied that life was permitted to take place by means of an appropriate spatial organization. A problematic phenomenon in Chinese residential houses was the lack of a central space. To Western architecture, a center was the basic constituent of existential space, where actions of primary importance always took place. In contrast, Chinese dwellings employed spatial orders to express the primary importance of psychological function. That meant that the directions were the principal symbol of humans sense of being-in-the-world. A series of walls and openings in general represented a possibility for movement. The directions of permitted movement indicated a persons concrete world of action. He/she could, according to the Confucian conduct codes, choose or create paths through which an intended direction was formed. As the number of walls from outside to inside increased, this person gained more possibilities for access to the inside space.

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Fig. 6 The general residential order in a courtyard composition

In a courtyard composition, the enclosed walls or buildings isolated the interior family space from the streets and dened clear boundaries among families. The longitudinal axis emphasized the main hall and main courtyard located in the inner central composition, making them the primary focus of the whole family. In general, the main hall, facing south, served as the living quarters of the oldest generation, while the side halls facing east and west and other halls on the parallel axis were used for the children and other people. The main hall typically had three or ve bays (Jian) in the length of its elevation. The side halls would be lower, smaller, ordinarily three bays (Jian), and less decorated (Liu 1989, p. 164). As the primary focus of the whole family, the main hall certainly became the most inviolable hall among the family. Here, family members worshiped their ancestors and showed their respect to the oldest generation every day. The building, hence, became the nucleus of the layout of the family. The arrangement of other halls showed the hierarchical orders in the distance to the main hall. The higher the position in the family hierarchy a family was, the closer it was to the main hall (Fig. 6). Through a series of walls and courtyards, the longitudinal axis from the front wall to the back wall was designated to reinforce a spatial hierarchical layering of etiquette as one moved from the front to the rear or to the side. Gradations in the progression of both horizontal and vertical space created the graduated privacy. Strangers were isolated outside, and the family was protected inside, as Knapp (1999, p. 3435) describes: Casual visitors may be invited into the entry vestibule, while friends and relatives are welcomed into the courtyard and at least the rst level of adjacent halls. Further inward is a realm of privacy for the women in the family. The cacophony of sounds beyond the perimeter walls of a courtyard house is muted by the enclosing walls, manifesting relative quiet within. Along the longitudinal axis, mostly a southnorth axis, as well as along the parallel and horizontal axes, a series of courtyard compositions and walls were clustered together. Every composition was separated and connected by dened spatial boundarieswalls and wall-functioned buildings. From the inside out, the main courtyard, front courtyard, and entrance yard formed one sequence of descending order in social status and spatial

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positioning. In this dispersion of space from the innermost to the periphery, there was a clear hierarchy in social terms. On the one hand, the main hall in the inner central courtyard claimed a higher social and political status. On the other hand, with the superior scaling of inner space, there was a relative height differential and therefore a relative domination of an inner and more central space over outer and more distant areas (Zhu 2004, p. 48). The hierarchical order in a concentric layout of enclosures was imposed either from the center to the periphery or from the innermost to the outermost. The Chinese residence integrated both spatial layouts to impose a vertical social hierarchy by placing the main hall with the highest status at the innermost locations and employing walls and wall-enclosed spaces. Walls not only encircled spaces from the whole family down to the courtyards and alleyways, but also dissected, internalized and deepened spaces. At the spatial level, walls and wall-functioned structures were the only material and constitutive element that dened the overall concentric, hierarchical position. Located at the inner center, the main hall, where the head of the family lived, assumed the higher status consistent with his signicant powers and resources, claimed the larger space and used a clearer geometric form for the settlement layout. Hence, the main courtyard composition, usually located at the center of the courtyard sequence, was the biggest, highest and most exquisitely decorated of the whole composition. The sons and grandsons activities were usually concentrated in the outer compounds, which represented a lower position, and developed in a dense settlement. The spatial segregation formed by walls and wall-enclosed spaces created a spatial hierarchical framework of a higher inside and a lower outside and a higher central and a lower periphery. Naturally, the more walls and wall-functioned structures that were inserted, the more vertical levels were created and the higher the center became. In a Chinese courtyard dwelling, the eldest sons family normally lived in the side hall located in the main courtyard composition, which ensured his highest status among his generation. There was a dialectic relationship between the walls and their openings. The walls dissected space into fragments, while the openings related and integrated the spatial fragments. The openings, usually in terms of doors, thresholds and windows, actually had critical effects in the exercise of power on the two sides of the wall. Although openings were the locations where space and human activities moved across or overcame the wall, they were also the points where the control and defense were reinforced. Only through the openings could the inside and outside space establish an asymmetry. The control, normally being targeted more to the outside space than to the inside, represented the higher position of the inside (Zhu 2004, p. 49). The openings were effective only if the wall dened the boundaries and the path through the opening was established. As the boundary of the social and spatial asymmetry, the wall with openings produced both physical and psychological distances. The distances represented a trend whereby the inside space pushed the outside away. A series of walls and courtyards generated a spatial sequence (Fig. 7). When a man went through different courtyards and walls, he also passed through various distances

Fig. 7 The spatial sequence from the outside to the inside

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experienced alternative spatial changes between the interior and exterior. He was also undergoing a spatial promotion from the lower to the higher step by step. The perception of space reached its peak when he arrived at the main hall, the end of the spatial sequence and the climax of the spatial progression. In addition, this spatial sequence creates a sense of graduated privacy and stimulates a strong desire to discover the innermost space concealed at the end of the sequence, which increases the fascination of the innermost space, as Lin (1994, p. 154) writes: An ancient Chinese girl mostly stayed at the inner courtyard all the time before their marriage. Few people had the opportunity to see her face. The more she was shut into the deep courtyards, the more a man was eager to see her. She certainly seemed more beautiful and attractive than those girls you met everyday. The location of openings was highly controlled according to the pecking-order of generation, age and gender in a family. For example, the number of openings in the wall between two generations dwelling compounds was restricted and only one or two doors could be placed there. The segregation of gender was of considerable concern in the Chinese family. High walls and very few openings limited the access to the unmarried females dwellings and minimized the interaction between the inside and the outside. Sometimes, servants were hired to guard some important openings to control the trafc ows. However, walls and the opening constraints were not obstacles in daily life. In fact, most openings were kept open during the daytime forming a smooth, continuing and expanding space. Different courtyard compounds were interconnected to each other through gates, doors and corridors. All forms of cultural and social life were accommodated and channeled through walls and wall-enclosed spaces. It was a vast eld within a residence used by all family members. With the random mixture of human movement and uncertain activity, there was a potential threat to the family order and hierarchy. Zhu (2004, p. 78) noticed that as the openings remained open, the dialectic tension rose between the needs to release space for free social life and the needs to impose divisions on space to frame and order social practice. Hence, when the openings were closed during night, the spatial divisions were reinstated, and the strict spatial order and hierarchy were reinforced by walls and wallfunctioned buildings. A Chinese dwelling possessed both aspects of the spatial operation.

6 Conclusion To establish a residential dwelling in the landscape meant to delimit an area. A family consisted of not only people who were bound together by blood and marriage connections but also a physical place where all family members lived. The family organization and household activities established a meaningful social relationship between the conguration of the site of home and the spatiality of human fellowships. The family was the core unit in all societies and represented the governance at the underlying level. Chinese people believed that if the social relationship in every family could be handled well, then the society would prosper and vice versa. Although families in China had considerable social and cultural diversity under the inuence of Buddhism, Daoism, various folk beliefs, and local cultures, Confucianism had been attached to the psychological subculture of every individual family to a greater degree than any other inuences and it was actually involved in dening the institutions and ideas of the Chinese dwelling. Slote (1998, p. 37) notes that Confucianism was rigidly authoritarian and bolstered by a social matrix that was

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essentially hierarchical. The Confucian family hierarchy traditionally had been dened by the generational sequences, the age orders and gender domination. The male of the senior generation was entitled to legitimate power, while the rights of children and women were minimal. A Chinese dwelling was a lentic structure, where all ingredients swirled around each other and by which ones identity and sense of self were established. A sense of security was brought to every family member by a large inward complex, where all family members lived together and were protected by walls from unsafe and uncertain external environments. The Chinese residential dwellings were both total and complex reecting the family hierarchical relationships. Through Confucian discourses and practice, the social hierarchy in families and spatial concerns were bound together. Ideas of senior-most head domination and the pecking-order based on generation, age and gender brought a formal representation of spatial centralism and a hierarchical separateness in household space. In a Chinese dwelling, the primary concern was not togetherness but separateness: the older generation should live away from the younger generation; the siblings families should live separately; and the unmarried daughters should be hidden inside. However, the strong pursuit of an extended family kept a family together. Walls were considered the best spatial component by which to apply the Confucian approach to resolve the tension of spatial centralism, separateness, and togetherness. An enclosed peripheral wall secured all family members from an exterior unsafe environment and produced the spatial togetherness. The residential space divided by walls and wall-functioned structures reinforced the patrilineal centralism by asserting the highest position of the family heads dwelling in the spatial hierarchy. By dissecting the integrated space into fragments for other family members living space and for controlling the possibility of access, walls separated a residential dwelling into a group of individual spatial units, to which the hierarchical role of a family member determined his/her access. In short, walls became the most fundamental physical and psychic component of a Chinese family and Chinese society at large. Walls became the most popular structure in China: every family had its walls; every city had its city walls; and the entire nation even built a state-wall, the Great Wall. Without walls, there would be no Chinese civilization and culture.

References
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