Architectural characteristics of Dai folk houses

In the valley dam area where people live by water, due to the influence of high temperature, humidity, rainy weather and lush bamboo and wood, the Dai people's residential buildings are mainly "dry hedges" (commonly known as bamboo houses). The upper and lower floors are made of wood and bamboo as piles, floors and walls, and the roof is covered with thatch and tiles. People live on the upper floor, and the lower floor is used for raising livestock and stacking farm tools and things. The whole building has a large space, with bamboo or wood as walls and floors, which helps to keep the room dry and cool. Nowadays, with the strengthening of ecological protection and economic development, some places have begun to replace bamboo and wood structures with concrete brick structures, but they still retain the form of "dry fence" or the shape of herringbone roof, so they are still used to calling it "bamboo building". In the wide courtyard around the bamboo building, planting fruit trees or digging small fish ponds can not only shade the sun, but also act as an unguarded natural green "fence". The bamboo fence placed casually on the periphery is not to prevent people, but to prevent livestock from breaking in.

In the Dai areas where the climate changes greatly, the flat dams are few and there are many mountains, and they live by the mountains and rivers, and they are replaced by thick and solid flat-topped earth palm houses. Earth account room is a civil structure, generally two floors. People live on the first floor, food and sundries are piled up on the second floor, and livestock are built separately. The earth wall has two layers and is three feet thick, which plays a unique role in preventing heat, cooling, cold and keeping warm. The compacted flat roof of civil engineering is five to ten inches thick, which can enjoy the cool in summer night and turn over the grain in autumn harvest, effectively using the space.

Buddhist temple architecture is a major feature of Dai architecture that believes in Hinayana Buddhism, and it is mainly floor-to-ceiling flat tile architecture. It consists of a hall of great heroes, a monastery and a drum room, with a Buddhist temple, a Buddhist sutra building and a stupa in the middle. The appearance of the main hall is generally a single-eaved or double-eaved roof, or a suspended, polygonal or zigzag double-eaved roof. After one or two falls, there are two or three layers of one-sided slopes, three-sided slopes and five-sided slopes. The number of slopes is related to the level of Buddhist temples. The roof is vertically divided into two, three or five sections, with the highest in the middle, which makes the huge and magnificent roof show a beautiful undulating curve.

Dai folk houses are a bright pearl in the history of architectural culture in China, shining with the brilliance of architectural culture history, which has a far-reaching impact on the history of architectural culture in China.