What are the characteristics of Gelao architecture of Ganlan building?

Gelao Hometown Architecture of Ganlan Building

Living conditions in each place are influenced by the geographical and human environment. For example, the dwellings of the Loess Plateau are kilns and yurts, and the dwellings of the Gelao are drybars. Ganlan architecture is a major feature of Gelao culture. What are the characteristics of Gelao Ganlan architecture? Why do Gelao people build a dry bar in their house? Let's take a look.

The bar is a wooden floor building. Some areas in the south are low-lying, humid and warm. In order to have good ventilation and moisture resistance, our ancestors built dry fence homes.

This type of log house generally consists of several stakes, logs, and boards with wooden posts forming a bottom frame in the lower part, which is higher than the ground. The bottom frame is constructed by driving stakes. After the piles are made, beams are placed on the upper frame, and then floor boards are laid, and then the beams and roof are erected on the floor boards to form a building with an empty frame.

The dry fenced building not only protects against snakes, insects and animals, but also against moisture. Poultry and livestock can also be raised underneath. To this day, this ancient form of construction is still used in some ethnic minority areas in the southwest of China.

The dry house is a house built on a wooden post base frame above the ground. The specific construction method is based on upright wooden piles, on which No. 0 bamboo keel is erected as a foundation to support the suspension of floor slabs. Then wooden posts and beams are erected on the foundation, a frame-like fence and roof are built, and the wooden posts and beams are filled with bark thatch or bamboo strips or grass mud.

Ganran style houses are also known in ancient Chinese texts as ganran, gaolan, gai lan and gai lan, and in modern Japan as takatoko. Water houses or fence houses seen in archaeology and ethnography belong to the Ganran style house.

The nests of literature and legend are believed to be the earliest predecessors of the Ganran Palace.

The main function of the dry fenced house is to isolate the house from the ground, thus providing effective protection against moisture.

In addition, according to ethnographic materials, it still has the effect of effectively utilizing an empty room and a room for various purposes. For example, in modern times, the Baima people of Wangba Tibetan Township, Pingwu County, Sichuan Province, build houses with wooden fences. These houses are divided into upper and lower levels. According to the custom of the Baima people, the lower level is used to keep livestock and the upper level is used to house people. In other ethnic minority areas, we can also see examples of the Baima people building houses with fences.

The Baima people claim to be descendants of ancient clans. If this is the case, the Ganlan-style living practices in this region can be traced back to the pre-Qin period. According to archaeological findings, the earliest known residence in Ganlan is the Ganlan residence unearthed at the Hemudu site in Yuyao, Zhejiang province.

The excavated Ganlan dwellings in Hemudu are large in size and scale. The repairable No. 8, No. 10, No. 12 and No. 13 wooden row piles may belong to a group of elongated buildings. Based on the analysis of the distribution length of the existing 10 rows of piles, this group of buildings is at least 23 meters long. The distance from the 8th row of piles to the 12th row of piles is 6.4m, indicating that the depth of this group of buildings is about 7m.

The distance of 1.3m between piles 12 to 13 forms the front porch of this group of buildings. According to this restoration, the Hemudu group site is a long house with a front porch and a wall. Its construction method utilizes advanced techniques such as beam head mortise and tenon and post nests, corner post nests, post head and foot mortises, tenons with small nail holes, square wood inserts, latticework, and penguin boards.

Hemudu-style dry-structure dwellings were found in the sites of Majiabang and Liangzhu cultures in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions in the Neolithic era, such as Qian Yangshan in Zhejiang, Luojiajiao in Tongxiang, Xiangcaohe in Danyang of Jiangsu, and Meiyan in Wuxing.

This kind of dry-rail residence is also found in the Neolithic site at the entrance of Jianchuan Sea in Yunnan. The model of a ceramic dry-rail house with long ridges and short eaves found at the Yingpanli Neolithic site in Qingjiang, Jiangxi, is an important evidence of the popular dry-rail living custom in the region during the Neolithic period.

Large wooden structures found at the Twelve Bridges Shang Dynasty site in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, and the early Western Zhou Dynasty site of Maojiazui, Hubei Province, show that dry-structure architecture and living practices during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties are still an important part of ancient China's architecture

Ganlan architecture is the architectural style of the southern ethnic minorities. It was very popular in ancient times in the residential areas of the Baiyue ethnic group in the south. This kind of building is mainly made of bamboo and wood. It is mainly a two-story building, with animals and sundries stacked on the lower floor and people living on the upper floor.

This kind of building is suitable for people who live in rainy and humid places. It is now mainly popular in relatively remote Zhuang areas, including central and western Guangxi, southeastern Yunnan, southwestern Guizhou and northern Vietnam. Other ethnic groups also have dry fences, but they are more influenced by Chinese and Buddhist architecture.