Characteristics and Styles of Dongxiang Folk Houses

Located in Gansu Province, Dongxiang is a distinctive ethnic minority with a long history and a blend of cultures. Most of the buildings of the ethnic minorities are built on the mountains and along the water, and the Dongxiang are no exception. The Dongxiang people live in the home called Zhuangxue, Zhuangxue mostly built on the mountain, outside the house has more than ten feet high earth wall surrounded by open space inside. So, together into the Dongxiang culture to see it.

Most of the Dongxiang people have been living in the scattered, remote mountains and deep ditches, in the process of fighting with the harsh natural environment, the formation of a unique architectural style. In the Dongxiang architectural art, widely used wood carving and brick carving process, wood carving in the beams, flying rafters, pads, beams and rafters, picking the seat, arch, partition, Edward, and windows and doors of the diamonds, spacer, skirts, taping ring aspects. Carving content is mostly abstract patterns such as spinning, six children, plum blossoms, wheel grass, etc., wood carving techniques on the yin carving line, relief, openwork carving, etc., for the building to add a sense of magnificent art.

Brick carving is divided into "pinch live" and "carve live". Pinch live refers to the processing of prepared clay mud, hand and mold made of floral patterns, and then into the kiln into a brick. Carve live, refers to the use of carving knife in the brick made of various relief patterns and flowers. Brick carvings are used in various parts of the wall above the wall, because of the setup of the figure, skillfully carved, people linger.

Unique residential. Dongxiang ethnic dwellings are more decentralized, and other places have certain differences in residential, with their own unique style. Dongxiang architecture is mainly residential architecture, mosque architecture, arch building three. The architectural style of the residents is simple, plain and practical. There are few styles, such as kilns, cottages, tiled houses and earth huts. Residential buildings: There are two types of kilns: the horizontal cave type and the upper bed type, the former is more spacious, and the latter has one door and window, so you can go to the bed when you enter the door. Zhuangyuan has a word courtyard, triple courtyard, quadrangle courtyard, even store courtyard and so on.

The traditional Zhuangyuan is dominated by bungalows, the main building materials for the soil game, in addition to windows and doors, columns and beams, the rest are made of clay soil poorly laid flat, the roof is covered with a layer of white soil, with a log in the way of compaction. There are two kinds of tile houses: "Yangsha Tile" and "Yin Yang Tile", "Yangsha Tile" refers to covering the roof with tiles in the sky, and "Yin Yang Tile" refers to covering the roof with tiles in the sky. The "yang-sa-wa" refers to covering the roof with tiles up to the sky, while the "yin-yang-wa" refers to laying another layer of tiles at the gap of the "yang-sa-wa", and structurally speaking, there are the "single-flowing tiled room" and the "two-flowing tiled room". Mosque building is the Dongxiang religious buildings, the general layout is "three halls in one", that is, the Hall of Worship, the Hall of Water and the Hall of the three halls in one, the Hall of Worship in the Hall of Water and the Hall of the two sides of the Hall of Worship.

In the mosque door to build a towering minaret. There are three types of architectural styles of the main hall: one for the Arab round-arched building, the second is the Chinese palace-style building, the third is the Sino-Arabic joint wall type of building, in the three types of buildings in the Chinese palace-style building accounted for the vast majority of the building. Arch building, generally built in deep valleys, remote and quiet, sparsely populated places, its main or core building for the master of the Church, the old man's tomb hut.

Tomb Hut are in the brick rectangular "arch" above and then cover a tomb pavilion, building more brick, wood carving, painting and other crafts. Tomb House generally called "eight hanging". There are round, quadrangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, octagonal and other shapes, can be built as a layer, two layers, three layers high, of which the majority of two and three layers.