What are the characteristics of residential buildings in Qinghai-Tibet area?

The main forms of residential buildings in Tibetan areas with characteristics of folk houses in Qinghai-Tibet area include tent houses, watchhouses, and stilt-style buildings. Its characteristics are that the indoor space is relatively low, mostly below 3 meters; the walls are thick at the top and the doors are thin at the bottom; the windows are small and the structure is stable; wooden frames are mostly used; and the roofs are mostly flat.

Tibetans are one of the 56 ethnic groups in China and are the indigenous people of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In China, it is mainly distributed in Tibet Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province and western Sichuan Province, Diqing, Yunnan, Gannan, Gansu and other regions.

The history of Tibet is an integral part of Chinese history. The Tibetan people have created a splendid national culture and left an extremely rich cultural heritage in literature, music, dance, painting, sculpture, architectural art, etc. The most representative Tibetan dwelling is the Diao Fang, which is a common form of living in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in southwest China and parts of Inner Mongolia.

Most of the watchhouses are made of stone and wood. The exterior walls of the houses are thick and the style is simple and rough. The exterior walls shrink upward, and if they are built against the mountain, the inner slope is still vertical. Diaofang is usually divided into two floors, and the number of rooms is calculated by columns. The ground floor is the livestock pen and storage room with a low floor height; the second floor is the living floor, with the large room used as the main room, bedroom, and kitchen, and the small room used as the storage room or stairwell.

If there is a third floor, it is mostly used as a sutra hall and terrace. Because it looks like a bunker, it is called a blockhouse. Tents can be seen everywhere in pastoral areas, while in agricultural areas or towns, flat-roofed houses are more common. The most authentic watchtowers are built of stone. The thickest part of the wall even reaches 1 meters. Most of the walls are thinner at the top than at the bottom, and the entire wall is trapezoidal.

Some blockhouses are civil structures, and their appearance does not look much different from stone blockhouses. However, its thickness is about one-third thinner than stone walls, and it is not as strong as stone walls. But like the stone blockhouse, it is warm in winter and cool in summer. Generally speaking, watchhouses are mostly multi-story buildings. The ground floor can be used as a pen for livestock, the second floor can be used as a living room, storage room, etc., and the third floor can be used as a sutra hall for worshiping Buddha statues, lighting butter lamps, etc.