Huizhou Vernacular Residences

Local Environment
Huizhou is located in the sinuous mountain area of southeast China. The climate in this area has a big temperature difference in winter and summer, and the average humidity is very high throughout the year. The villages in Huizhou usually are situated with their backs and sides embraced by overlapping ranges of verdant mountains and their front facing east towards meandering streams. This setting is considered auspicious according to fengshui, for that this topographic configuration shelters the village from the cold winter winds blowing from the northwest and also facilitates good drainage, while providing an orderly arrangement allows individual dwellings to access to fresh air and warmth of the winter sun.

Social and Historical Background
Since Ming dynasty, Huizhou has been famous for its merchants. They are shrewd, smart and hard-working people, amassing profit from trade and pawnshops. Due to the limitations of the transportation and lack of arable land in their hometown area, Huizhou merchants usually led a sojourning life by doing business in the wealthy cities of the fertile lower Yangtze valley. Always far away from home, Huizhou merchants came to appreciate fine homes, and invest lots of money on refining their ideal home environment. Their life experience in the outside world enabled them to bring cosmopolitan values and patterns back to their tranquil rural villages where they build house as their own retirement sanctuaries. Huizhou merchants especially value the importance of education and respect to ancestors. As a result, the best locations in a village were usually given to schools and ancestor’s hall.

Major Features of Huizhou Residences

High perimeter walls
Limited by the rugged local terrain, Huizhou residences are usually in multistoried compact forms. Buildings are completely enveloped by high fortress-like outer walls. These brick perimeter walls are coated with white plaster and usually does not have any windows or opening to the interior building space except for a highly decorated symmetric front entrance. The high perimeter walls disguise the scale and magnificence of the dwellings inside. Therefore, when you look at a Huizhou residence from outside, it just looks like a big white box full of mystery and the unknown. The outer walls are designed in this way in order to provide security and privacy of the family members—women, children and the elderly—who were left alone by their sojourning husbands and elder brothers.

The large faceless perimeter walls are capped with stepped gables called “horse head walls”, because the rhythmic zig-zag shape of the stepped gables looks like the head of a horse. Horse head walls are stepped at different elevations and serve as a fireproof defensive function that protects the massive load-bearing timber frameworks.
The stepped silhouette of dark horse head gables and the crisp whiteness of the perimeter walls add simplicity, quietness and solemnity to the Huizhou residences. They are also the signature features of Huizhou architecture.



Tianjing (skywell)

The dwelling plan is punctuated with several tianjings or skywells, relatively narrow rectangular voids that open the interior to light, air and rain. Its ground is slightly recessed below the surrounding area, and the perimeter of the tianjing usually has a shallow indented catchment area for collecting rainwater as well as draining any surplus water outside the dwelling. These catchment areas are connected to a drainage system that leads to the larger exterior canal channel. The numbers of tianjings in a traditional Huizhou residence varies according to the size of the house, but the most common form of Huizhou residences has two tianjings—a front tianjing and rear tianjing.

Tianjings have both architectural and social significance. Architecturally, tianjings are the centers of each of their dominated area. The front tianjing and rear tianjing respectively represent the center of the front part and the back part of the house. A big spacious hall is usually facing the tianjing, and this hall has the most important role in the overall building. It is sometimes the main living room, the dining room or the ancestors’ hall where an altar and the portraits of ancestors are displayed. Other rooms are arranged around tianjings according to the order of their importance. The elder people’s bedrooms are usually placed on the second floor above the central hall, facing the tianjing, while the younger people’s bedroom and the guest rooms are placed at the sides of the central bedrooms. For other less important spaces such as kitchen, bathroom, barn house and storage room, there is a single story utility structure adjacent to the main building. This one story addition part has its own external side entrance connecting to the exterior. It is designed so because in traditional Chinese families, servants were usually not allowed to enter the building from the main entrance.

In the densely compact Huizhou residences, tianjings are the only place in the building that one can feel the outside changes in the nature. A small rectangular pool or large water vats are usually placed in the center of the tianjing. They served as rainwater collectors for domestic use as well as reservoirs in case of fire. The space tianjing creates is somewhat like the central courtyard garden in the four-fided courtyard residences in Beijing. However, tianjing is different from a central courtyard garden in that, its ground is typically paved with inlaid dressed stone while courtyard gardens have soil on the ground which can directly plant plants. However, even without soil and as many plants as the garden in Beijing residences, tianjing still creats an elegant microcosm of nature with potted plants and fishes in the pools. Compared with the courtyard gardens in Beijing courtyard residences, tianjing creates a beauty that is more subtle, controlled and elegant, which is somewhat like the concept of Japanese zen garden.

In a larger residence there may have as many as nine tianjings, such as the case in the most famous Huizhou residence, Chen Zhi Tang (Hall of Inheriting Ambition). Besides the central tianjings which serve as the same central layout purpose as in small scale residences, there are small tianjings scatter around the sides of the house. These small tianjings sometimes include a pool of water that is connected to the drainage system outside, and surrounding overhanging benches which provide an area for relaxation and contemplation. Small tianjing sometimes may simply be a square of clearing with nothing in it, or a small clearing area with a big potted plant. The different ways tianjing spaces are untilized reflect different personalities of this relative space .

On the third level, the roofs have the intersecting layers of clay tiles. Each of the four roof slopes surrounding the tianjing leads water into the tianjing where it falls to the ground, in the process affirming the local fengshui maxim “si shui gui tang” or “the four waters return to the hall.” Like a tall container of water, the house metaphorically express that wealth will accumulate in the residence and not be dissipated by flowing outward.
Tianjings are also activity hubs of the family. The front tianjing are sometimes used as large banquet and ceremony space, while the rear tianjing is a more private family gathering space where children played, woman worked, and old family members enjoy the warm sunlight.


Decoration
Stone, brick and wood carvings are three kinds of major decorations in Huizhou residences. Stone and brick carvings are typically seen in the entrance spandrels, partition walls and screens. Wood carvings can be found in the supporting beams of building. Since the buildings are all wooden structure, the richly carved wooden beams served dual functions of supporting and decoration. The contents of the carving usually include some Chinese traditional tales with auspicious meanings.

The partition door panels and windows are also skillfully crafted. They not only enhance the ornamentation of the building but also control the flow of air and light into the enclosed spaces. Also worth mentioning is that these intricately carved wooden doors can be removed in order to integrate the interior and exterior spaces, which enhances the versatility of the interior space.
The central corridor around the tianjing on the second floor is not directly exposed to the central opening space, but closed by carved lattice windows. This design provides multiple options to the residents in controlling the sunlight, wind and rain at a time when glass windows were very rare. Even in the winter time when the windows are totally closed in order to resist the cold, the small apertures in the windows can allow the exchange of fresh air and sunlight.