Doorway Culture

Tips at the door | The fifth day of the sixth lunar month

The hut lives in a diaojiao building. Most Miao people live in mountainous areas, and the mountains are high and steep, so it is extremely difficult to dig the foundation. In addition, the weather is rainy, humid and foggy, and the bottom of the brick house is very heavy, which is not suitable for living. Therefore, the Miao people have been building dry wooden buildings with good ventilation, which are called "Diaojiaolou".

Miao people's diaojiao buildings are generally built on slopes, divided into two or three floors. The top floor is very short, and only food can't live in people. Stack sundries downstairs or make a barn. Two floors without a top floor. Generally, bamboo paste mud is used as the wall, and grass covers the top. Now it's mostly changed to tile roofs.

Miao Diaojiao Building is built on a slope, and the ground is cut into a "factory"-shaped earth platform supported by long wooden columns. According to the height of the soil platform, purlins and beams are installed in one section, which is parallel to the soil platform. Diaojiaolou is seven or eight meters low and thirteen or fourteen meters high, covering an area of twelve or thirteen square meters. Except for a few Chinese fir skins, the roof is mostly covered with blue tiles, which are smooth and compact, generous and tidy.

Diaojiao building is generally built with four rows and three rooms, and some have built one or two "slant buildings" in addition to the main building. Each row of wooden columns is generally 9, that is, five columns and four melons. Each wooden building is generally divided into three floors, the upper floor stores food, the middle floor houses people, and the lower floor has fences for stacking sundries or raising livestock. On the first floor where people live, there are wooden ladders next to the upper and lower floors, and this floor is equipped with a corridor with a width of about 1 m. The hall is a welcoming room, and the rooms on both sides are divided into two or three small rooms as bedrooms or kitchens. The room is spacious and bright, with symmetrical doors and windows. Some Miao families also have fire pits, and they burn fires to keep warm in winter. There is a gate in front of the nave. There are two doors and a window on each side. Nave has a backrest railing under the front eaves, which is called "beauty leaning".

Diaojiaolou is a traditional Miao architecture and a unique ancient architectural form in southern China. It is considered by modern architects to be the best form of ecological architecture, with people living upstairs and overhead downstairs. Diaojiaolou is a unique building in Miao township, which is surrounded by mountains and waters.

The formation of diaojiao building has both historical and natural reasons. According to the architect, Miao Diaojiao Building is a unique creation of dry railing building under mountain conditions, which belongs to the dry railing building with bucket-span girder and wooden frame. Historically, the architectural culture of Miao nationality can be traced back to ancient times. It originated from Jiuli Tribe Group, the Miao ancestor Chiyou who participated in the creation of Hemudu culture and Liangzhu culture around Taihu Lake. The archaeological discoveries of Hemudu culture and Liangzhu culture confirmed that the dwellings of Miao ancestors were dry-column buildings.

These diaojiao buildings full of Miao artistic images provide eternal passion for the hard life of the Miao people.

The foundation for building a diaojiao building must be to dig the slope into two layers; The depth of each floor is more than 6 feet, and the area of each floor is about 100 square meter. The difference between the upper and lower floors is more than 4 feet, and the gable and outer mountain between floors are made of stone.

When building a house, the front row of floor-standing house columns are placed on the lower foundation, and the outermost floor-standing house columns are flush with the floor slab protruding from the upper foundation, forming suspended hanging feet, and the space between the upper and lower foundations becomes the bottom floor of the hanging foot building, which is the so-called "uneven" hanging foot architectural feature. The diaojiao building adopts bucket-through structure, with 5 columns in each row. There are as many as seven pillars, and the pillars are connected by melons or squares to form a solid network structure. Maple must be used in the central column, because maple is a totem tree of Miao people's life and a sacred tree symbolizing the soul of their ancestors.

Diaojiaolou has profound cultural connotation. Diaojiaolou not only has its own characteristics and forms, but also has its profound cultural connotation, that is, space cosmology. This can be seen in the mysterious symbols everywhere in the center of the main beam of Miao Diaojiao Building. The symbol is circular and divided into two layers. The outer circle is painted with vermilion or ink, and the center is painted with red, such as an "egg" shape. The shape of the whole sign is very Gu Zhuo.

Symbol please have a certain witchcraft "Mo Ke" or Tujia wizard chisel a round hole in the center of the yellow circle. The owner of the new building kneels down and connects all the wood residues with clothes, and finally writes the words "Gan" and "Kun" on both ends of the beam. Gu Zhuo, a mysterious symbol, is a symbol of the origin of the universe, which contains the Miao people's ancient memories of the creation of heaven and earth and the birth of mankind.