Ancient world architecture can be generally divided into seven major systems

Cultural Spirit of Chinese Architecture

Generally speaking, the ancient world has had about seven major independent architectural systems, some of which have long been interrupted, or not widely spread, achievements and impact is relatively limited, such as Ancient Egypt, Ancient West Asia, Ancient India, Ancient American architecture, etc., only the Chinese architecture, European architecture, Islamic architecture is considered to be the world's three major architectural systems. Only Chinese architecture, European architecture, Islamic architecture is considered to be the world's three major architectural systems. Among them, Chinese architecture and European architecture continue the longest period of time, the widest basin, and the achievements are also more brilliant.

China's earliest prehistoric architecture, born at the turn of the Old and New Stone Age about 10,000 years ago, that is, the beginning of primitive agriculture, people's settlement requirements began to enhance the time. The earliest buildings that showed the first signs of beauty, i.e., the requirements of art in the broader sense, appeared in the middle of the Neolithic period in 4,000 BC. In terms of a structural system, traditional Chinese architecture ended at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Throughout its long development, Chinese architecture has retained the basic character of the system intact. From its entire history can be divided into several large paragraphs, such as the Shang Zhou to Qin Han, is the germ and growth stage, Qin and Western Han is the first climax of the development; through the Wei Jin through the Sui Tang and Song, is the stage of maturity and peak, the achievements of the Tang and Song are more brilliant, is the second culmination of the peak of China's architecture can be regarded as the Yuan to the Ming and Qing dynasties is the stage of enrichment and summary, Ming to the Shengqing before the development of the third culmination of the development. It can be seen that the emergence of each climax was correspondingly accompanied by social backgrounds such as the unification of the country, long-term stability and rapid cultural exchanges. For example, the unification of the Qin and Han Dynasties accelerated the cultural exchange between the Central Plains and the cultures of Chu and Yue; the unification of the Sui and Tang Dynasties enhanced the cultural exchange between China and other Asian countries, as well as between the North and South within China; and the unification of the Ming and Qing Dynasties strengthened the exchanges between the various ethnic groups of China, and initiated the exchange of architectural cultures of the West and the East. Unlike other arts, such as poetry, which often flourishes in times of chaos, it can be argued that unification and stability, economic prosperity, national strength and cultural exchanges are the inherent opportunities for the development of the art of architecture.

Traditional Chinese architecture to the Han architecture for the mainstream, mainly including such as cities, palaces, altars and temples, tombs, temples, pagodas, grottoes, gardens, government offices, civil public **** building, landscape pavilions, royal residence, residential, the Great Wall, bridges, roughly fifteen types, as well as such as pagodas, stone tablets, tablets and other architectural vignettes. They are in addition to the aforementioned basic **** through the development process, and there are different times, regions and types of style.

Based on the soil of China's long-term patriarchal society, China's architecture to the palace and the capital city planning the highest achievement, highlighting the idea of supremacy of the emperor and strict hierarchical concepts, reflecting the dominant political and ethical view of ancient China, and with the European, Islamic or Indian architecture to the temples, churches and mosques, and other religious buildings with higher achievement is clearly different. Palace from the Xia Dynasty has sprouted, the Sui and Tang Dynasty reached a peak, the Ming and Qing Dynasty more refined. Western Zhou has formed a complete concept of capital city planning, emphasize the symmetry of the king's palace pattern, in the "rites and music" of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States, the pattern of rectification has been damaged, the Han Dynasty and began to rectify the return, Sui and Tang to complete the process, the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties are more abundant. Chang'an in the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Yuan capital and Beijing in the Ming and Qing dynasties are the three most prestigious imperial capitals in Chinese history.

The Chinese patriarchal ethic has also influenced almost all other types of architecture, such as the quasi-religious altars and temples dedicated to the gods of nature and to the sages and sages of the past, as well as the cultural contexts that place special emphasis on blood relations and on the concepts of "honoring the dead and pursuing the distant," and "treating the dead as if they were alive". "and in the cultural context of the special emphasis on the relationship between blood relatives and clansmen, pay special attention to" careful attention to the "death as life" and other concepts such as the development of the emperor's tomb, etc., which is almost unique to China's type of architecture, the scale of the grand, the atmosphere of the solemn and striking.

China is mainly popular Buddhism imported from India, Buddhist architecture, including Buddhist temples, pagodas and grottoes, as well as stone buildings, stone lamps and other architectural vignettes. Buddhist architecture was influenced by India in the early days, and soon began the process of Chineseization, reflecting Chinese aesthetics and cultural character, full of serenity, calm and introverted atmosphere, and completely different from the outwardly exposed, turbulent atmosphere of Western religious architecture. Taoism is China's indigenous religion, Taoist temples to learn from the Buddhist temple, also has a tranquil atmosphere. Differently, Buddhism and Taoism temples can be divided into two categories: imperial temples and mountain temples, the former closer to the palace, rigorous and magnificent; the latter closer to the people's homes, free and flexible. Pagoda in the history of Chinese architectural art occupies an important position, the type of diverse, rich in form, the development of the vein can be traced, the characteristics of the times and regional characteristics are also reflected in a more distinctive.

Based on a high degree of synergy with nature, the spirit of Chinese culture, love of nature, respect for nature, architecture set in nature, as if it were an organic component of nature, and other architectural systems emphasize the contrast between artificial and natural. This is clearly reflected in all types of Chinese architecture, such as cities, villages and towns, mausoleums or residential site selection and layout, and rise to a certain theoretical height, "feng shui" doctrine is a concentrated representative. The concept of focusing on a high degree of synergy with nature is more prominent in the garden, belonging to the natural style, as opposed to the European or Islamic geometric gardens. Chinese gardens are mainly royal gardens and private gardens of two kinds, the two Han Dynasty to the former is the main, achievement is higher than the latter, after the Tang and Song Dynasty, the level of private gardens gradually high, to the Qing Dynasty, the royal garden to the private garden to learn. Although they have *** through the artistic character, and private gardens more reflect the aesthetic mentality of the literati, the survivors of the Jiangnan region with higher achievements, the style of fresh and elegant, more subtle techniques; Royal Garden is mainly in the development of North China, the survivors of the Beijing area is the most centralized, the scale of the huge, gorgeous style. Chinese gardens enjoy a high reputation in the world, and are regarded by Europeans as "the mother of world gardens".

A wide variety of folk public **** building such as ancestral halls, ancestral halls, shrines, halls, academies and landscape pavilions, etc., to the Ming and Qing dynasties remain the most, but also y impregnated with the spirit of traditional culture. Yamen remains less, the few surviving more complete in the Qing Dynasty, there is a set of prescribed layout pattern, in order to show the clean, the style is relatively simple. Belonging to the residential buildings of the Royal Palace and the survivors of the residential areas are also left in the Qing Dynasty, which is particularly noteworthy, not only a wide variety of forms are very diverse, but also more direct and more realistic face to face ordinary life, the embodiment of the group cultural mentality is particularly honest and straight, reflecting the regional characteristics more prominent, its unique simplicity and wisdom of the beauty of the sometimes not in the emperor under the giant structure.

Chinese architecture attaches particular importance to the beauty of the group combination. Groups of combinations often take the axis of symmetry of the rigorous composition, but some types such as gardens, some mountains and forests, temples and some homes are used in a free-form combination. Regardless of the composition, attach great importance to the neutral, easy, subtle and deep pursuit of aesthetic character, reflecting the national aesthetic habits of the Chinese people, and other architectural systems such as Europe, highlighting the building of individual radial extrovert character, the volume of the body shape of the strong contrast and so on there is a clear difference.

Chinese architecture and all other architectural systems in the world are dominated by masonry and stone structure is different, is a unique style of the only system dominated by wood structure. The structure not only has the meaning of engineering technology, its wit and clever combination of structural beauty and decorative beauty, itself is also the content of architectural beauty, especially the wooden structure system, its complexity and subtlety for the masonry structure is not as good as, reflecting the wisdom of the Chinese people. Further processing of organic structural components and other ancillary components, formed into a unique Chinese architectural decoration, including internal and external decoration, color painting, wood carving, brick carving, stone carving and glazing, with a very rich approach and vivid development process.

The architecture of China's ethnic minorities is also unique, greatly enriching the overall appearance of Chinese architecture. Tibetan architecture is y rooted in the unique Tibetan Buddhist culture in the soil, although absorbed some of the images and techniques of Han architecture, and self-contained system, very rich in features, large-scale, bright colors, character rough giant, its representative masterpieces, worthy of world-class architectural art boutique. The Uyghur people have the greatest achievement in Islamic architecture, belonging to the world's Islamic architectural system, with simple and simple modeling, quiet and contemplative character, and their dwellings are significantly different from those of the Han people. The Dai believe in Theravada Buddhism, architecture by the same Theravada Buddhism popular areas of Thailand, Myanmar and other countries have a greater impact, in addition to the rich characteristics of the Ganjian-style homes, to charming and exquisite Buddhist temples and pagodas have more charm. Although the architecture of the Dong ethnic group is greatly influenced by the Han Chinese, it is still famous for its unique drum tower and wind and rain bridges, and its artistic character is simple and ancient. In addition, such as Hui Ismaili architecture, Naxi, Bai, Tujia and Korean residential, are also unique. These national architectural works of art, like a little star in the sky, and Han architecture together, *** with the composition of the splendor of Chinese architecture.

Chinese architecture to China as the center, the flow of waves and Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Mongolia and other vast areas of East Asia, has had a great impact. They and China together, *** with the composition of Chinese architecture as the core of East Asian architecture. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Chinese architecture, especially the garden art, which is completely different from that of the West, began to be known to Europe and had a real impact. At the same time, Chinese architecture as early as the Han and Jin dynasties received foreign influences, mainly from South and Central Asia, which have been melted by China into its own organic part in the long course of history.

For historical reasons, ancient China did not leave us a systematic monograph on architectural theory, but the high degree of maturity of Chinese architecture and its great achievements have proved that Chinese architecture not only possesses, but also has developed into a very rich in Chinese characteristics of the theory of the art of architecture, including a complete set of architectural philosophy, but also includes the spatial and physical composition of the building or the environment. They are scattered in various literary and historical texts, and have adopted a "Chinese" way of elaboration. Some of them have not been summarized by the ancients as a text, but from a large number of architectural works, it is still possible to read the hidden information.

Since modern times until today, Chinese architecture in the traditional soil, combined with the requirements of the new era and new architectural means, absorbing foreign architectural culture, continue to move forward. Especially in the last one or two decades, with China's entry into the new period of reform and opening up as an opportunity, more rapidly changing speed forward, has produced initial promising results.