Characteristics of Hanging-footed Buildings

The most basic feature is that the main house is built on the ground, and the compartments are connected to the main house except for one side which is on the ground, the other three sides are overhanging and supported by pillars.

There are many advantages of the suspended footstools, as they are high above the ground to provide ventilation and dryness, as well as protection against poisonous snakes and wild animals, and they can also store sundries under the floorboards.

Hanging buildings also have distinctive national characteristics, elegant "silk eaves" and wide "walking rail" make the hanging-footed building a style of its own.

This kind of hang-footed building is more successful in getting rid of primitiveness than the "railings", and has a higher cultural level, which is called the "living fossil" of Bachu culture.

People also planted flowers and grasses in front of and behind the house, and various kinds of fruit trees

Hanging-foot buildings, also known as "hanging buildings", are the traditional dwellings of the Miao (Chongqing, Guizhou, etc.), Zhuang, Bouyei, Dong, Shui, and Tujia, etc. There are especially a lot of them in the southeast of Chongqing and the northern part of Gui, the western part of Xiangxi, the western part of Exi, and the southeastern part of Qiandong. Hanging-footed buildings are mostly built on mountains and rivers, in the shape of a sitting tiger, with "the left blue dragon, the right white tiger, the front vermilion bird, the back Xuanwu" as the best house, and later on, they pay attention to the direction of the house, or sit west to east, or sit east to west. Hanging-footed buildings belong to the dry-rail type of construction, but with the general reference to the dry-rail is different. The dry rail should be all overhanging, so the footstools are called semi-dry rail buildings. The construction of the footstool is a major event in the life of the Tujia people.