What's the name of Miao's house?

Miao people's residential buildings have various forms and are quite distinctive. Design and construction not only follow the tradition, but also require comfortable living. According to the geographical environment and existing materials, all localities build buildings by land (materials). Guizhou Miao folk houses can be divided into four types: branch houses, stem houses, lamp rack houses and Han houses.

First of all, strange architectural forms

Miao folk houses are not only places for daily life, but also places for concentrated expression of national culture. Usually life, productive labor, gathering of relatives and friends, and religious activities, such as textile, embroidery, breeding, weddings, funerals and sacrifices, are all carried out here. Due to the long-term influence of these customs and natural conditions, it has a unique form and strong applicability in building structures. Guizhou Miao folk houses are generally divided into the following categories:

1, "branch" residence

"Branch" residence is a horizontal long building and the oldest form of residence. Its characteristics are simple and easy to make, and it adapts to the primitive life and production methods, such as slash-and-burn cultivation and random relocation. The pillars and beams of the house have no tenons and mortises, but are tied and fixed with bamboo sticks and rattan.

The "branch" room uses natural miscellaneous wood, and leaves top branches when cutting; Some also use nails to fix two triangular wood blocks at the top of the cylinder and tie them with bamboo sticks or rattan to form artificial branches. The three branches are arranged in a row, the middle branch is higher, the crossbar is beam, the left and right branches are lower, and the crossbar is eaves, forming a herringbone roof truss. Tie a number of slender wooden strips on the crossbar to form a suspended gable roof. The roof is covered with Chinese fir bark or thatch, and the walls are made of bamboo chips and thatch. The "tree right" residence is arbitrary, and a one-bedroom, three-hall residence can be completed in one day.

Another kind of "fork-shaped" house is to sandwich the tree rights with special wallboard, pour in the soil, tamp the fill with wooden sticks, then remove the wallboard and heighten it layer by layer until it reaches the cornice. This form is commonly known as "dry shop".

The Miao people's "Shuquan" houses are small in scale, 8 to 10 meters long and 4 to 6 meters deep. The interior is divided into three rooms by bamboo and thatch. There are halls in the middle, and some purlins have ancestral halls; The other two rooms have kitchens, stoves and fire pits, which are mainly used for cooking and heating; The other bedroom is shared by adults and children. Livestock pens and toilets are generally built behind or on both sides of the house.

"Branch" houses were popular in Qiandongnan and Miaoyao areas in northwest Guizhou in the early days of liberation, but they are rarely preserved at present. Occasionally seen in backward and remote mountainous areas, it is generally used as a livestock pen or for stacking sundries.

2. "Gan Lan" style residence

"Ganlan" residential habit is called "Diaojiaolou". Guizhou Miao, Dong, Tujia, Shui and other ethnic settlements all have "Gan Lan" dwellings, and their forms and patterns are similar. It is a folk building form loved by people of all ethnic groups in Guizhou. This kind of building takes wood as the main raw material, and the roof is covered with green tiles, Chinese fir bark or thatch.

The Miao people's "Gan Lan" residential style is unique. Miao people's houses in Taijiang, Leishan and Jianhe in southeastern Guizhou are mostly built halfway up the mountain, dug and filled by the hillside, forming two floors of flat land.

The characteristic of "Gan Lan" residence is to erect wooden stakes on the low lawn, which are about 2 meters long. The beams of high-rise buildings are bucket frames, and the high-rise buildings are on the same floor. Under the bucket frame is the bottom floor of the house, which is separated by wooden boards, bamboo fences and tree strips and used as shelter, livestock pens, toilets and so on.

The second floor of "Gan Lan" residence is the main place for Miao people to live and live. In the middle of the second floor is the hall, and the front of the hall is recessed about 2 meters, which is called "swallowing mouth"; There are railings and backrest along the outer edge, which is called "beauty leaning" and is specially designed for girls to rest in embroidery. There are two doors in the main hall, and there is a shrine to ancestors in the main hall. The two ends of the hall are divided into several rooms, one of which is mainly used as a bedroom and a guest room, and the other is a kitchen, with a stove, a kitchen cabinet, a pool (cylinder) and so on. The third floor of a house is usually the storage room of the owner's house, where grain, seeds, sundries and various waxes are piled up. This three-story "dry fence" house has wooden ladders up and down, and the stairs are located in the house with a cover plate.

The architectural feature of "Gan Lan" residence is that the whole house is fixed by tenons, mortises, horizontal rows and wooden tips, without a nail. According to the depth of the house, each row of columns in the "Gan Lan" residence is divided into "three columns and two melons" and "five columns and four melons", and the columns are fixed with beams. The middle column is the highest, and it descends to the eaves columns on both sides in a herringbone shape. The descending extent is determined by the speed requirement of water flow on the tile surface, commonly known as "water step".

3. "Lantern Frame" Residence

The "lantern rack" residence may be the remains of ancient dry houses. Because it is fixed by four slotted columns and eight parallel cross bars at the four corners of the house, it looks like a lantern, so it is called "lantern rack". The so-called "lantern rack" is to split a number of wooden sticks in half, and the notches cut at both ends are matched with the notches of the columns to form a well-shaped frame, and the wooden sticks are stacked layer by layer to form the four walls of the house. A pillar stands between two opposite walls and supports the beam of the roof. At the top, a suspended mountain top is made of slender wooden sticks, covered with Chinese fir bark and thatch. This kind of building is rare now, and it is mostly used as a livestock pen.

4. "Han" style dwellings (bungalows)

This is a common Miao folk house in Ping Huang, Kaili, Shibing and other places in southeastern Guizhou. This kind of house is a rectangular arc one-story bungalow, with three rooms in the plane layout, and a few five to seven rooms. The middle is usually the hall, and the numbers between the left and right are symmetrical. The door of the main room is recessed with a pillar called "swallowing mouth". There are no railings on the steps under the eaves. There are two doors in the hall, and there is a shrine memorial tablet in the middle of the hall. Hall space is high, there is no building, generally only nail the ceiling; There are buildings on both sides, but most of them are unoccupied, only some dry goods and sundries are stored. The second room is divided into front and back rooms, and the left front room is dug with a fire pit and a stove for heating and cooking. The rest rooms are bedrooms, guest rooms and places where tools and sundries are stacked.

The livestock pen and toilet in the "Han" house are built in the same house, but separated from the house. Most of them are built on both sides of the courtyard of the house at right angles to the main house, making the whole house square.

"Han" residential building materials are not limited, commonly used wood, stone, earth bricks, but also brick-wood mixed structure.

Second, interesting architectural customs.

Building a house is a very grand event in the life of Miao people, and the choice of foundation and date of the house is very particular. Miao people generally live in villages, and their homesteads choose to avoid shade and face the sun. Some choose to be in the rolling peaks around, some choose to be on the mountainside surrounded by peaks or in the mountains backed by cliffs, and some choose to be under pines and cypresses or on the mountains with overlapping mountains. The rich also specially invited Mr. Feng Shui to choose the standard and the homestead.

After choosing the homestead, it is very important to choose the date. First of all, we must speculate from the previous generation of eight characters: whether there is a genus, if there is no gram, it is a good omen. Generally, the Miao family likes ugly, ugly, old, unfinished, unitary and old days as auspicious days. After the auspicious day was set, the master invited a skilled carpenter to go up the mountain with wine, meat, fish, glutinous rice, scented paper, axe, saw and ruler, and chose a lush, stout and tall Chinese fir as the central pillar of the new house, which was called "riding a horse". Before cutting down the tree, the carpenter caressed the wine and pinched the meat at the root of the fir tree as a sacrifice, saying, "Which tree is the biggest?" Which tree is the tallest? This tree is the biggest! This tree is the tallest! There are nine hugs and nine clouds. I'll cut you down today and build a house forever. "After reading the concubine, the carpenter master cut three axes in the tree with an axe and gave it to his master to cut three axes. Then give the axe to the helper to cut down the tree. The direction in which the tree falls is very particular. You must try to fall the tree to the east as a sign of good luck. Then saw off the cut trees, peeled and shaved according to the size of the pillars, and transported them home. Carpenters also have to burn incense and light candles, kill chickens to worship Lu Ban, and carefully put an ink line on the stigma, which is called "hair ink", indicating the start of the new house.

It is a great event to put beams after a new house is built. Liang Mu's choice is also very particular. Generally, Chinese fir, Toona sinensis and Catalpa bungeana are selected. This kind of tree is very renewable. After the main tree is cut down, many new branches will be sent out from the roots in the next year, which indicates prosperity. The local custom is that Liang Mu was given by Uncle Lang. On this day, Uncle Lang's family cut the beam, made it into a blank, wrapped it in red cloth, and had it carried to the master's house. The host should prepare firecrackers to meet Liang Mu at the entrance of the village.

After the beam is carried to the owner's house, the carpenter will finely process it according to its size. Set a good time, set up the upper beam stairs, and prepare for the upper beam. When you climb the beam, you should sing the song of climbing the beam At the beginning of boarding the beam, the carpenter sang in the new house: "As soon as I entered the room, my family invited me to board the beam, step by step on the ladder and board the new house. Xiantao Hall is full, and my family has been rich for thousands of years. The first step is popularity, the second step is Sun Qiang, the third step is money, the fourth step is champion, the fifth step is five, the fifth step is five, and the sixth step is six. " After putting on the beam, the host family scattered several baskets of colorful glutinous rice-made beam cakes from the beam, and adults and children flocked in to eat them, making the room full of joy.

Installing a shrine in a new house is also a very serious matter. The requirements for installing shrines are higher than those for doorframes. As the saying goes, "the shrine is higher than the door of the hall, and children and grandchildren are born at their own door." The shrine is lower than the door of the house, and the glory is destroyed. "

The installation of the door in the new house is also very particular. On an auspicious day, the carpenter installed the gate, and friends and relatives came to congratulate him. The respected people in the village always wear new clothes, shoes and hats. And prepare a plate with rice, coins, silverware and colored silk thread on it, as well as a new suit for adults and children, which is called "rich plate" locally. The most distinctive of Miao folk houses is the "Diaojiaolou", which is generally divided into cloister Diaojiaolou and semi-corridor Diaojiaolou. This kind of wooden structure building is moisture-proof, clean, cool and ventilated. Generally, there are three floors, and sundries are stacked on the lower floor to prevent livestock from approaching. The middle floor has balconies, railings and corridors for living; The upper layer stores grain, supplies and dry goods. In summer, it's cool to walk into Camus Wooden Building, and the hospitality of the host makes the guests feel at home.

The residence of Miao people is related to the housing structure. The middle is slightly wider than the second room on both sides, generally divided into two rooms, the front room is spacious, which is a hall, a place for the whole family to eat, warm up and entertain guests, and a shrine is installed. In the past, a square barrel-shaped fire pit was usually installed in the middle of the hall, and three feet of iron was put in it, so that the fire would not go out all year round. Put a bracket or hook above the fire pit to put food and hang things. On the left side of the central column of the main hall are horns for worship, and some still stand a small bamboo as a "long-lived tree" next to the central column. When offering sacrifices to ancestors, pour a few drops of wine and pinch a little meat at the side of the fire resistance or outside the door. The small room at the back of the hall is reserved for men and the elderly, and married sons or daughters-in-law are absolutely not allowed. The left and right rooms are divided into front and rear rooms. The left front room is the son's bedroom or guest room, and the back room is the parents' bedroom or fire prevention. The pigsty and toilet are at the foot of the building or near the house.

These houses can still be seen in Taijiang, Jianhe, Leishan and Ping Huang.

(Pan Guohua, Associate Research Fellow, Ping Huang Cultural Bureau)