Homes

TO THE TEACHER

OBJECTIVES OF THIS UNIT: To enable students to think about how Chinese homes were built and furnished. To encourage discussion of the connections between material culture and social organization. To provide concrete examples of regional variation in Chinese culture.

TEACHING STRATEGIES: Because students all have lived in homes, they should find it easy to think about the ways organizing space shapes interactions or reflects social relations. The technical detail on how houses were constructed should be of interest to anyone who has ever tried to build anything, and certainly some students will find this approach to the material side of Chinese culture more interesting than a more strictly aesthetic approach.

Because of its emphasis on climate and on regional variation, this unit complements the one on geography at a more sophisticated level. To make this unit more challenging, students could be asked to relate the aesthetic principles of Chinese houses and furniture to the aesthetic principles they have seen in other units (especially Ancient Tombs, Calligraphy, and Painting).
WHEN TO TEACH: This unit relies heavily on modern and contemporary photographs, but aims to document features of traditional architecture that date back many centuries, giving the teacher considerable leeway on when to use it.

HOUSE ARCHITECTURE

By the Ming dynasty, we have substantial evidence of how people lived. Not only do some houses survive, but we also have thousands of items of furniture from the period, numerous illustrations of homes in novels and plays published in the period, and even manuals describing how to build houses and furniture. Besides, we know enough about what houses were like in Ming times to know when photographs of modern buildings can be used to illustrate features of Chinese houses already present in Ming times.

How people constructed, decorated, and furnished their homes tells us a lot about their resources, aesthetic preferences, and social habits. This unit covers building structure and the interiors of homes. It offers material to think about both class and regional variation. In China, as in most other societies, houses are a form of material culture with strong connections to family structure. Indeed, like the English word house, the Chinese word jia can be used to refer both to the physical building and the family that occupies it.

INTERIORS

Think about the following questions as you look at each aspect of the home environment:

	What can we infer about people's lives from the spaces they created to live in?
	How did geography shape how people met the need for shelter?
	What aspects of house design and furnishing cannot be explained by climate?
	Are there features of Chinese furniture that make it especially suited for use in a Chinese house?
	What were the biggest differences in the ways the rich and the poor lived? Are these the same sorts of differences one would have found in Europe of the same period?