House Home Family: Living And Being Chinese

Drawing on the work of leading scholars in the fields of anthropology, architecture, art, art history, geography, and history, House Home Family explores and analyzes the functional, social, and symbolic attributes of Chinese dwellings. It goes beyond generalization to clarify the diverse nature of house, home, and family in China, exploring topics such as the Chinese garden as an integral part of living, house-building ritual and fengshui, architectural aesthetics, the interrelatedness of furniture and architecture, preservation of historical structures, the structure and development of the family (jia), gender and household space, the role of lineage in the construction of ritual and social space, the function and meaning of the architectural division of space, and domestic space and privacy. The Chinese house, the elementary space in which a family lives and works, resonates with tensions between continuity and innovation that characterize China today. As a dynamic instrument of socialization and a domain of propriety, its 'inner' and 'outer' spaces as well as ornamentation and ritual helped shape the identity of the Chinese and serve as a reflection of this identity. This volume in the series Spatial Making and Meaning in Asia’s Vernacular Architecture contains more than five hundred illustrations, most in color, including rare drawings demonstrating the richness of domestic architecture and living patterns in traditional and contemporary China. By exploring how Chinese families are organized and why they construct their living spaces the way they do, this well-researched and insightful book provides a deeper understanding of what it means to live and be Chinese.