What are the characteristics of Luoyang folk houses?

Characteristics of Luoyang folk houses

The houses in Luoyang belong to the north courtyard style, but there is a remarkable feature, in the words of outsiders, that is, "Luoyang is a monster, and the house is half built." As a native of Luoyang, I was not surprised by the style of local architecture before, because I was not surprised. I thought it was the same all over the country. After hearing this view from outsiders, I began to pay attention to the originality of Luoyang folk houses.

Suppose there is a courtyard (called "house" in Luoyang dialect) with three bedrooms and facing south in the north. The terrain is four or five steps higher than the courtyard and one or two meters away from the north wall. The middle room is usually called "big house" because only this room has two doors except the courtyard door. In addition, because it is particularly distinguished, it is also called "big house". Usually, a large table is placed in the middle of the north, where ancestral tablets and incense are enshrined. There are two chairs on both sides of the square table, which are exclusive seats for elders. In the past, the "big house" was basically used for four purposes: the daily life of elders, meeting guests, dining (generally dining in the courtyard, only important dinners such as entertaining guests and festivals were held in the "big house") and ancestor worship. Now there are only the first three, where the memorial tablets and offerings were originally placed, and now there are televisions. In many rural areas, a big bed is placed in the north of the "big house". The old people are served by their children, visited by relatives and neighbors, and finally buried and mourned in this "big house" until they leave home completely.

There are small doors on both sides of the "big house", which leads to the next wing and is the master's bedroom. The small door and door panel are uncomfortable, only a curtain is hung. Some wing rooms are divided into north and south rooms, the north room is connected with the "big house", and the south side of the south room is an independent single room on the side of the "big house".

On the east and west sides of the courtyard are a kitchen and a mansion (four tones in Luoyang), and the terrain is flat with the courtyard. The kitchen is near the north, not only adjacent to the building, but also two or three meters away from the front eaves of the building. This layout is really troublesome. When the food is ready, you have to take it out of the kitchen and go up four or five steps before you can enter the "big house". Not to mention the distance, if it rains, food will inevitably get wet by the rain.

Next to the kitchen is a mansion, where the younger generation lives. The characteristics of Luoyang folk houses are all blamed on the kitchen and mansion. Other houses have herringbone roofs, but these two houses are half-herringbone, leaning from the courtyard wall to the courtyard, much like a tile house cut in half along the roof, which may be the origin of the "half roof of the house". The reason for this cover is probably to facilitate rainwater drainage. If all the neighbors use "human" roofs, rainwater will definitely accumulate in the cracks between the two houses, which will definitely damage the houses for a long time. Using the chevron roof, rainwater flows to our hospital, thus avoiding this damage. The house in the south is called frontage because it is close to the street. The terrain is slightly higher than the yard, but lower than the building. In the middle is the courtyard gate. The gate of the yard and the gate of the "big house" are on the same axis, but people outside can't see the situation in the yard from the gate, because there is a shadow wall directly opposite the gate in the yard.

The role of the screen wall is to block the outside view and protect the privacy of the courtyard, which is particularly important in Luoyang, because under normal circumstances, the gate of the courtyard is open, from morning till night, and the bolt is closed only before going to bed. This may be another feature of Luoyang folk houses, but it is not conducive to theft. It may be that Luoyang has a simple folk customs and few thieves since ancient times, or it is too poor to steal. In recent years, people's hearts are not ancient, and theft incidents have occurred from time to time, so some courtyards that still retain the traditional pattern have closed, and the screen wall has lost its function and disappeared without a trace.

The courtyard with three bays is symmetrical from north to south and from east to west. It is basically a quadrilateral. The house in Luoyang is more divided into two rooms, that is, there is only one mansion, and the courtyard door is on one side of the mansion; There is no screen wall, only the south wall of Xia Zi can be seen from the doorway, but the situation in the hospital is still invisible. This layout is a bit like cutting the yard in half, which is probably another origin of "half-built houses".

The brick structure of this traditional house is rare now. There are many reasons for its decline. On the surface, there are two reasons. First of all, it has the common fault of traditional houses in China: solemnity is more than comfort. There is no toilet in the hospital, which is not in line with modern people's habit of pursuing comfort. Even if you want to build a bathroom, its location is also a headache, no matter where it is built, users feel inconvenient.

The second is the development of urbanization. In the early days of the People's Republic of China, Luoyang developed rapidly and its urban area doubled. Learning from the Soviet Union's big brother era, the new urban areas are all Russian-style buildings, while the old urban areas and suburban houses only retain traditional buildings. After entering the 1980s, with the increase of foreign population, enterprises became increasingly difficult, and the livelihood of private owners became more and more dependent on renting houses. Multi-storey buildings naturally replaced this flat "half-covered and half-covered" small courtyard, but the layout is still in the traditional form. In the 1990s, many small courtyards in the suburbs were changed into fully enclosed "small foreign buildings", and some big houses were even built into matchbox buildings. Only rural houses far away from the city still retain the traditional layout, but reinforced concrete precast slabs have replaced the old tile houses, and semi-"human" houses have disappeared from people's sight. "If you want to know the rise and fall of the world, please only look at Luoyang City." Isn't the decline of Luoyang folk houses a microcosm of the national traditional folk houses (and even traditional culture)?

"Luoyang is a demon, and the house is half hidden." Who knows what this building is in the future?