arthistory

Upon the move of the capital to Luoyi (Luoyang), the Zhou controlled less of China than they had for most of the previ- ous three hundred years. Instead, dozens of states rose, built cities, and vied for power during the period known as Spring and Autumn. Cast iron appeared in China around the eighth century BCE, making metal weaponry easier to produce and cheaper, in addition to the use of iron in agricultural imple- ments.1 Bronze and jade technology became more sophisti- cated, with inscriptions on bronze vessels remaining an impor- tant source of information about the major historical figures of the period and their states. Writings of this Classical Age of Chinese thought provide information directly relevant to architecture and ceremonies in and around it, and thousands of tombs offer information about building technology as well as objects that filled them.

Rulers’ Cities

Passages in texts of the early centuries CE have guided the understanding of architectural remains dated from the Western Zhou through the early Spring and Autumn period in the region of central Shaanxi known as Zhouyuan, the area that once belonged to the state of Qin, discussed in the previous chapter. The phrase qian(you)chao, hou(you)qin, or “in front, audience hall; behind, private (or resting) chambers,” a reference to the placement of buildings in imperial settings, is almost iconic:2 it was observed at Majiazhuang and is still in place in the Forbidden City, where the Three Front Halls were for audience and other court functions and the Back Halls were for imperial residence; and when the empress held audience in the Back Halls sector, she slept behind her hall of audience. Her position behind the emperor was further demonstration of the greater importance of a front building or complex and lesser significance of architecture behind. The idea that the more public space of a ruler is in front of where he lives and sleeps is in evidence at every Chinese imperial city from the third century onward and will be implemented in tomb and cave-temple construction.

One passage from “Kaogongji” (Record examining trades or crafts [including construction]), a section of the Zhouli (Rituals of Zhou), has emerged as preeminent in writing about Chinese cities. It is a prescription for Wangcheng (ruler’s city). Like the rest of “Kaogongji,” the passage is believed to refer to Zhou practices, even though the text survives probably from the

period of Western Han.3 Wangcheng is to be a square whose four wall positions are determined by measuring out from a midpoint according to the sun’s shadow. Each side of the wall is 9 li, the number nine associated with fullness and perfection and, by extension, with royalty. Major thoroughfares are to cross the entirety of Wangcheng from wall to opposite wall. The central thoroughfares, however, are blocked by the ruler’s palace, positioned in its own walled enclosure. The palace faces south with markets behind it, a temple to the ruler’s ancestors on the east, and altars to soil and the five grains on the west (figure 2.1).4 A civilization of archetypical images, ever aware of and building on its past and at times resisting innovation, Chinese imperial urbanism shows resonances of this idealized plan through the rest of China’s imperial history. Yet already in the Eastern Zhou dynasty alternate arrangements of Chinese rulers’ cities existed.

A key feature prescribed for Wangcheng persists: the pal- ace-city, or gongcheng. Indicated in Shang and earlier capitals, a designated, walled palace area is found in almost every Zhou city where a ruler resided. The evidence is stronger in Eastern Zhou than Western, for as mentioned above, once the Zhou capital moved east, contenders for power increased, and with time, the sizes of cities of those who prevailed increased as well. The many Eastern Zhou cities divide into only four plans.

The city Wangcheng described in the “Kaogongji” is the Zhou capital Luoyi, which was squarish, about 3 kilometers on each side, and surrounded by a moat. A few building founda- tions have been excavated, but not enough remains to confirm that it followed the prescription for an ideal ruler’s city. Qufu, in Shandong province, where Confucius was born in 551 BCE, and Anyi in Shanxi are the closest Eastern Zhou examples to the Wangcheng plan. The late Longshan city Guchengzhai, mentioned in chapter 1, may have had this plan as well. Qufu, capital of the state of Lu from the reign of King Cheng in the eleventh century until conquest by the state of Chu in 249 BCE, was surrounded by a rectangular wall with rounded corners that measured about 3.7 kilometers east to west and 2.7 kilo- meters north to south, all enclosed by a 30-meter-wide moat (figure 2.2). The wall had eleven gates, two on the south side and three on each other face. Ten major thoroughfares ran through the city, five north-south and five east-west, each ema- nating from a city gate or leading to an important building. Large building foundations in an area of about 1,000 by 500 meters, roughly in the center of the outer wall, are believed

CHAPTER 2

Architecture of the First Emperor and His Predecessors

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ARCHITECTURE OF THE FIRST EMPEROR

to be from an enclosed palace-city. Three foundations on an axial line are believed to have supported a gate, palatial hall, and altar. That area was inside the confines of the Han-period city wall, which shared its southern and western border with part of the Zhou city but was outside a later wall that survives in part today.5 The Eastern Zhou city at Anyi in Xia county of southwestern Shanxi had much in common with the Lu capital in Shandong. Both were oriented northeast-southwest. Measuring 4.5 kilometers north-to-south and 2.1 kilometers east-to-west, Anyi’s palace area was roughly in the center of a much larger outer city. The Anyi city was last studied in the early 1960s, so we do not have the kind of information available for the capital of the Lu state. In the 1960s Anyi went by the name Yuwangcheng, city of King Yu, Yuwang also the name of the village where it was found.6

The second urban pattern of the Eastern Zhou period is represented by Jiang, the capital of the state of Jin in Shanxi province. Here the roughly rectangular outer city wall was 8.48 kilometers in perimeter, surrounded by a moat. The 1-kilo- meter-square inner city was in the north center, sharing a boundary with the north outer wall. A street of more than a kilometer in length ran from the north wall through the inner city and into the outer city.7

The third urban pattern is the most common among capi- tals of large Zhou states: multiple walls that are not concentric. Adjacent walled enclosures positioned north and south, east and west, or at the corners of each other are among them, and occasionally there are more than two walls. The state of Zhao, in Handan in southern Hebei, flourished from 403 to 222 BCE. The 1.888-square-kilometer site has archaeological remains from the period of Spring and Autumn. That area became an outer city when the Zhao moved its capital to Handan in 386 and constructed adjacent east and west cities south of it. In this case, then, there are three adjacent walls (figure 2.3a). In the palatial sector, the western enclosure is just under 1.4 meters on each side and contains the largest building plat- form known from the later part of the Zhou dynasty. Almost certainly the place identified in texts as Dragon Terrace, it forms a roughly north-south line with two smaller building platforms behind it. The eastern city to the south is 926 meters east to west by 1.442 kilometers north to south. This wall is 20–40 meters wide as opposed to 20–30 meters for the western wall. Here, too, three platforms form an axial line through the city north to south. The older, northern city is 1.52 kilometers

north to south and approximately 1.4 kilometers east to west. Only one foundation platform remains inside, suggesting it may have been the palatial area of the Spring and Autumn city. Another platform is directly opposite outside the northern city’s western wall, perhaps evidence that there was another enclosure of the earlier city. Workshops have been excavated outside the walls to the northwest.8 Handan is an example of

2.1. Illustration of Wangcheng, “ruler’s city,” from Nie Chongyi, Sanlitu (Illustrated “The three li (ritual) classics”), part 1, juan 4/26, orig. 962

2.2. Wall of Qufu, capital of state of Lu, Shandong, second half of first millennium !"#

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a city where additional walls and growth continued when new rulers conquered existing cities.

Xiadu, literally lower capital, of the Yan state in Yi county, Hebei, just south of Beijing, is an example of an Eastern Zhou city with adjacent walled areas that are further divided by a canal (see figure 2.3b). Positioned between rivers to the north and south, the 30-square-kilometer area stretched about 8 kilometers east to west by between 4–6 kilometers north to south. The more developed part of the Yan capital was on the east with an enclosed sector to its north. Remaining wall por- tions are about 40 meters wide. A narrow sector at the north is further divided from the rest of the eastern sector. Platform foundation remains suggest this northern area was the location of the palace. The number coincides with four terraces (tai) named in Shuijingzhu (Commentary on the Waterways Classic), a treatise perhaps written in the third century and annotated in the early sixth century by Li Daoyuan (d. 527), which describes 137 waterways in China and, in the process, other features of the landscape such as cities. The central and largest terrace, 140

by 110 meters and 11 meters high, is probably the foundation of Wuyang Terrace.9 Bronze, iron, bone, and pottery workshops are among the ruins of the eastern sector of Yan Xiadu, as are places where bronze currency was cast. Cemeteries are found in both cities.10

The capital of the state of Qi in Linzi, Shandong, which flourished for more than six hundred years from 859 to 221 BCE, is one of the oldest examples of a city with adjacent walls. Here the palace-city was in the southwestern corner of a much larger walled area (see figure 2.3c). The rammed-earth outer wall was 14 kilometers in perimeter and contained a popula- tion of 210,000 households. Two gates provided access on the north and south, and there was a single gate on the eastern and western sides. The seven main roads through the city emanated primarily from city gates; they were as wide as 20 meters. The palace-city in the south, 1.5 by 2.5 kilometers, was enclosed by a wall that at points was 60 meters wide. It, too, had main roads passing through wall gates. A platform of 14 meters in height and 86 meters north to south known as Duke Huan Platform

2.3. Plans of three multiwalled cities of the Eastern Zhou period a. Handan, capital of Zhao, Hebei; b. Xiadu, capital of Yan, Hebei; c. Linzi, capital of Qi, Shandong

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was in the northeast. It was probably the main palace sector through the city’s Zhou history. A drainage system ran beneath both walled enclosures, and pottery, bronze, iron, and bone workshops were found, as well as a mint. Two large cemeteries also were excavated within the city. The cemetery of the later rulers of Qi is about 10 kilometers outside the city walls.11

Xintian, capital of the state of Jin in Houma, southern Shanxi province, flourished from 585 to 376 BCE. It is better evidence than Handan of continued occupation and growth on a preexisting city site. By the end of the twentieth century, seven walled enclosures, four of which shared space, had been uncovered in an area that was 4.7 square kilometers. Large, rammed-earthen foundations amid smaller ones were found in two of the enclosures, suggesting palatial halls. The capital of the state of Zheng, which became the capital of the state of Han in 375 BCE in Xinzheng, Henan province, was a city of about 20 square kilometers with two adjacent walls; its small palace area, only 500 by 320 meters in extent, was in the western walled section. The eastern city was not significantly larger than the western one, but it may have served as an outer city. The Xinzheng capital had several bronze foundries and is the source of important bronze hoards that included musical instruments.12

The fourth type of Eastern Zhou city had a single wall with a palace sector inside it. Ying, the capital of the state of Chu just outside Ji’nan in Jiangling, Hubei province, today is an example. It was founded in 689. Contained in walls that were as thick as 40 meters at the base and tapered to 10–14 meters, and 4.45 by 3.588 kilometers in perimeter, the north and south city walls had sluice gates that have been theoretically recon- structed as shown in figure 2.4. Eighty-four palatial founda- tions and more than thirty cemeteries with more than eight hundred mounded tombs have been identified.13

Hundreds of states vied for power in the Spring and Autumn period.14 No name could more aptly describe the 250 years that followed than Warring States. By the mid-third century BCE, only seven survived. The above-mentioned Qi, Yan, Zhao, Han, and Chu were among them. The others were Wei and Qin. The capitals of each of these states and the many of the first millennium BCE that did not endure until the third century had markets. The “Kaogongji” passage about Wangcheng states that a market was part of every ruler’s city. Several other texts of the period reinforce the role of commerce in later Zhou cities. Bamboo slips excavated in a tomb in Linyi, Shandong

province, in 1972 contain sections of a document known as Shifa (Rules about markets). According to Shifa, markets were administered by officials, specific products were sold in pre- scribed locations, and misconduct in the marketplace was pun- ished.15 The text Zuozhuan (Zuo commentary) informs us that market officials were on duty in the pre–Warring States period of Eastern Zhou. The third-century-BCE official Xunzi wrote that in the earlier part of Eastern Zhou, market directors were largely responsible for maintenance, cleaning, traffic flow, security, and price control, and in later Eastern Zhou they expanded to merchandise inspection, settlement of disputes, loans, and tax collection for sales, property, and imported goods.16 One also learns from texts that each state market had its own name. Whether Eastern Zhou states functioned as city-states according to the definition used for those of ancient Greece is debated.17

Archaeological evidence informs us about other aspects of commerce in and among Warring States cities. Seals that name officials in charge of state-controlled minting of coins and foundries for bronze weapons and vessels are almost invariably found in the vicinity of palaces, suggesting that these indus- tries were tightly controlled by the state ruler. Workshops for goods such as farming tools and pottery usually were farther from palaces, perhaps suggesting less government control of manufacturing, sales, or distribution. More than thirty thou- sand coins uncovered at Yan Xiadu suggest that currency was an important commodity. An early-fourth-century massacre in this city has led to the theory that the urban population increased dramatically and posed a challenge to royal control of the city’s goods and production, and that the mass murder was an assertion of power by the ruler to regain control of his state.18 Other archaeological evidence suggests that warfare was not only inter- and intracity but between Chinese states and nomads at China’s northern frontier. Gold objects made almost certainly by northern nomadic populations have been

2.4. Reconstruction of section of sluice gate, south wall of Ying, capital of Chu state, Jiangling, Hubei, 689–278 !"#

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found in Warring States period tombs. Entwined animals are prevalent among the gold, and interlace patterns and inlay, all characteristic of the art of peoples including the Scythians known as Animal Style, dominate Chinese bronze vessels of the Warring States period.

Rulers’ Tombs

Our knowledge of these vessels comes from tombs, most of them belonging to Eastern Zhou kings or princes. Royalty were interred in lingyuan, royal funerary precincts, spacious grounds that included architecture of the ruler, family members, often those close to him in life such as officials, and sometimes servants or slaves, as well as aboveground architecture for sacrifices and additional land that kept the tomb area isolated from a nearby city of the living. This practice would continue through the Han dynasty. Nonnobles also had cemeteries, as did lineages. The size and structure of the tomb, number of coffins, numbers and kinds of bronze vessels, and presence of objects such as instruments were prescribed in texts and determined by rank. More than a dozen royal tombs or cemeteries of the Warring States period have been excavated. Here we highlight those with important architectural features or objects that provide unique information about architecture.

Chu, the largest state during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, has yielded more than five thousand tombs. The above-mentioned Chu capital city in Ji’nan, Hubei, had sluice gates (see figure 2.4), and in Baoshan and Jingzhou, both in Hubei, and elsewhere, Chu built royal tombs (figure 2.5). The single approach ramp, stepped sides, and coffin pit at the center are simplified compared to tombs of the late Shang rulers in Anyang (see figure 1.11). The tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, a name on objects in his tomb but perhaps a man whose name was different in historical records, in Sui county of Hubei, who died in 433 BCE, was divided into four compartments, each lined with wooden planks and each con- nected to adjacent sections by tunnels.19 This pit tomb with no approach ramp had space between rooms and between the burial and ground level that was sealed by charcoal and other materials. Although this tomb is best known for the set of sixty-five bronze bells weighing about two-and-a-half tons, it

also reveals three important features of Eastern Zhou archi- tecture. First, the contents and purpose of the compartments are differentiated: the main chamber contained the marquis’s and eight other coffins, the latter all female sacrificial burials, as well as the coffin of a dog; a room with thirteen coffins is on the opposite side of the main chamber; between them and to the north were burial goods. Second are the plank walls, which are used in other tombs of the period such as one excavated in Xinyang, Henan.20 Third are windows. We have seen doors that open outward in a bronze vessel of the early Zhou period (see figure 1.15). Doors are painted on the outer of two lacquered wooden coffins of the marquis, and windows divided into four panes are painted on the inner sarcophagus (figure 2.6). The window might be compared to the representation of windows or other light sources in tombs of ancient Egyptian royalty, symbolically providing a view to the world outside.

One of the most important artifacts for the study of Eastern Zhou architecture was excavated in a cemetery of the Zhongshan kingdom in Pingshan county of Hebei province. King Cuo (r. 327–313 BCE) and his wife and concubines were buried beneath truncated pyramidal mounds, his being 100.5 by 90 meters at the base and 18 meters square at the top. A funerary hall was on top of the mound. Again we see continu- ation of a much earlier practice: a funerary temple was on top of the tomb of Lady Hao at the last Shang capital in Anyang. Also following precedents from Yin are approach ramps to King Cuo’s subterranean chamber from the north and south, with the primary burial in a pit at the center, similar to the structure of the Chu tomb at Baoshan as well (see figures 1.11, 2.5). Horse and chariot pits, treasuries, sacrificial burials, and a pit for a boat were all part of the universe created underground for King Cuo. Here, too, one readily draws comparisons with ancient Egyptian practices that included the burial of boats that would have made passage through the dark, watery under- world possible.

2.5. Two Chu tombs, Juliandun, Baoshan, vicinity of Ji’nan, Jingzhou, Hubei, period of Chu state

2.6. Reconstruction of inner co!in, tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, Leigudun, Sui county, Hubei, ca. 433 "#$

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The object is a bronze plate of 94 by 48 centimeters and about 1 centimeter in thickness. A plan of the burial precinct is inlaid with gold. The representation of three-dimensional space in two dimensions is extraordinary anywhere in the world in the third century BCE, and the use of scale is more amazing. Distinctions in line thickness suggest that different kinds of lines had different meanings for builders. Breaks in lines indicate gates. Inscribed notations are as extraordinary as the plaque itself. Building sizes and distances between buildings and walls are provided. They are given in chi, a unit of measure similar in usage to the English word foot, and whose specific length changes through Chinese history, and in bu, paces, even more similar to foot. South is at the top of the diagram, where it would be for most of the rest of China’s premodern cartographic history. Archaeologists have named the diagram zhaoyutu, image of the “omen” ter- ritory, zhao, or omen, presumably a reference to the funerary world (figure 2.7).21

Perhaps even more important than the scaled and labeled plan is the forty-two-character directive on the plate that there be two copies, one to be kept in the palace and this sec- ond one to be buried with the ruler. The purpose was so that future generations would know how to construct a tomb in the manner of their ancestors, and by inference, the under- standing that the patterns of antiquity were to be followed or, more explicitly, that the intent of royal architecture was to model itself after its past and to be continued in the same manner in the future.

The tomb of Yun Chang, the king of Yue on Mount Yin, Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, was part of a moat-surrounded cemetery of approximately 85,000 square meters. It had an underground chamber that was triangular in section. The tomb, 46 by 14–19 meters at the base and 14 meters into the surface of the mountain, was lined with wooden slabs and sealed with charcoal in the manner of the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng. The subterranean space, 34.8 meters long, 6.5 meters wide, and 5.6 meters high, was divided into three rooms. Burial was inside a 6.5-meter-long tree trunk that had been cut in half (figure 2.8).22

As for other tombs of the Warring States period, tombs of the state of Jin are in southern Shanxi and seem to divide according to the lineage of the deceased; south-facing tombs of the state of Wei in Hui county, Shanxi, have funerary temples on top of mounds; mounded tombs believed to belong to Zhao

2.7. Zhaoyutu (plan of the omen territory), 94 by 48 by 1 cm, ca. 313 !"#, excavated in tomb of King Cuo of the Zhongshan kingdom, Pingshan, Hebei. Hebei Provincial Museum

2.8. Tomb of Yun Chang, king of Yue state, Yinshan, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, Hebei, ca. 500 !"#

2.9. Drawing of bronze pole showing balustrades, cantilever corner brackets, and hipped-roof with bird and dragon ornaments at the top and drawing of its four sides, excavated at Xiadu, capital of the Yan state, Hebei, Warring States period

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royalty are in the vicinity of Handan; the royal cemetery of Qi is in the vicinity of Linzi; and the royal cemetery of Yan is near Xiadu. Seventeen log coffins, some carved into the shapes of boats, excavated in a pit tomb of 30 by 21 meters at the base in Chengdu, were part of a royal cemetery of the state of Shu.23

Excavated objects of the Warring States period may inform us about architectural details of the period. A bronze pole divided into three registers supports a one-bay-square roofed structure (figure 2.9). Like bronze vessels of the Western Zhou dynasty, it shows the use of balustrades (see figure 1.15). The five-ridge roof has a dragon on each side ridge and winged creatures at the ends of the main ridge. Similar creatures join cantilevers to the undersides of the roof to help support it. Animals on roof ridges and cantilevered bracketing will be standard in Chinese construction through the nineteenth century. A building engraved on a bronze mirror excavated in

Zhaogu village, Huixian, Henan, is even more informative. The structure is supported on a high foundation, with two stories above it. Theoretically reconstructed as it appears in figure 2.10, this depiction combined with excavations of architecture and literary descriptions are the basis for reconstructions of architecture through the end of the first millennium BCE.24

Architecture of China’s First Empire

Between 230 and 221 BCE, the remaining six warring states fell to Prince Zheng (259–210 BCE) of the state of Qin, who declared himself Shi Huangdi, Primordial August Thearch, and founded the Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE) in 221; he is often referred to as the First Emperor. Although his own dynasty endured a mere fifteen years, building principles observed in Qin were much older and endured much longer. The rendering

2.10. Sectional drawing and reconstruction of multilevel, pillar-supported structure incised on bronze vessel, excavated in Zhaogu village, Hui county, Henan, Warring States period

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of cartographic space, for example, seen on the bronze plate from the tomb of King Cuo of Zhongshan (see figure 2.7), is evident on pine boards excavated in Tianshui, Gansu province, and dated 239 BCE.25

From 677 to 383 BCE, the state of Qin was centered in the above-mentioned region Zhouyuan, which included the modern cities Qishan, Fufeng, and Fengxiang, the locations of building complexes and perhaps ancestral temples in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (see figures 1.12, 1.13). This part of Shaanxi also contained enormous ducal tombs of the kind constructed across China in the middle of the last millennium BCE. A 21-square-kilometer necropolis with some thirteen tomb areas, each with one or two main tombs, includes the seventh-century BCE tomb of Duke Mu and the largest burial of the Spring and Autumn period, possi- bly the tomb of Duke Jing (r. 576–537); it is 5,334 square meters in area. Tombs believed to be royal are approached by long ramps from two sides like those in Anyang and King Cuo’s tomb in the Zhongshan necropolis. Many of the tombs were enclosed by moats, some by double moats, and some by “dry moats,” perimeters dug as if to contain water. There is no evi- dence of mounds above the Qin state tombs.

In 383 the Qin state moved its capital farther north in Shaanxi to Liyang in Lintong county, near the site that would become the capital of the Qin dynasty. Roof tiles, indications of streets, and wall pieces confirm its thirty-four-year exis- tence.26 Cruciform-shaped graves in Lintong are believed to belong to fourth-century BCE Qin dukes. They are different from the Qin state tombs in western Shaanxi in an impor- tant way: funerary temples were on top of the earlier tombs, whereas the fourth-century burials were covered with mounds and funerary temples were nearby.

Initially Prince Zheng resided in palaces that remained from the Qin capital of the Warring States period. Following unifi- cation of the states in 221 BCE, he built new, larger palaces on new sites. The Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) tells us that the First Emperor had three hundred palaces with another four hundred outside the palace-city walls.27 What these numbers refer to depends on how one defines palace, for as explained in the introduction, the character gong, translated as palace, can refer to one courtyard or more than twenty that are interre- lated in a complex of palatial buildings. The outer boundaries of Qin Shi Huangdi’s capital also are vague: different from the dictum in “Kaogongji” that stipulates a ruler should build the

square outer wall of his city and then construct palaces, altars, and markets inside it, the First Emperor constructed his pal- aces before he walled his capital, and the short duration of his dynasty is the likely reason the outer wall was never completed. The city was approximately 7.2 kilometers east-to-west by 6.7 kilometers north-to-south, with its northern boundary along the Wei River.

By the early twenty-first century, foundations of four build- ing groups had been excavated. Evidence is strong that the first of them, known as palace 1, had at its core a two-story structure with seven rooms on the first floor and five upstairs, and with a central pillar extending from the ground to the upper-story ceiling.28 Palace 2 is northwest of palace 1, and about the same size, but in a poorer state of preservation. Palace 3, the largest so far, was also two stories and was con- nected to palaces 1 and 2 by covered arcades. Its lower story had eleven rooms. Murals done in mineral pigments remain in palace 3. Subjects include acrobats, horses, animals, floral motifs, geometric patterns, and architecture. The architectural elements are especially interesting. Features such as tie-beams are painted along the upper walls where they would be found in an actual building. The paintings anticipate a broader-based imitation of architectural elements in relief sculpture or paint in later time that is known as fangmugou, imitation of the timber frame. Carbon-14 testing on wood from palace 3 dates it to the mid–Warring States period, suggesting that painting and refurbishing probably occurred during the Qin, but older building parts were reused.

In addition, excavators believe they have found some of the palaces the emperor is reported to have built in imitation of those of each of the final six states as he toppled them during his unification of China. Pottery tiles with the names of several of the states have been uncovered on either side of palace 3. Qin Shi Huangdi’s greatest achievement in palatial architec- ture was to be Epang Palace, immortalized in the Records of the Grand Historian as a project for which the emperor conscripted more than 700,000 laborers and which, when it was destroyed by the armies of the man who would found the Han dynasty, burned for several months.29 The remains of Epang Palace are about 15 kilometers west of Xi’an in the vicinity of the Western Zhou capital Hao.

The concept of a traveling palace (xinggong) also blossomed under the First Emperor. The palatial residences in and around the capital were a means of decoy for the ruler, information

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about whose specific whereabouts at a given time could be punishable by death. Qin Shi Huangdi also used traveling palaces in the manner they would be used by emperors for the rest of Chinese imperial history: he made inspection tours of his empire to demonstrate and consolidate his power, inscrib- ing rocks and building residences at sacred and strategic sites en route.30 He no doubt traveled on plank roads that had been built in the Warring States period. Parts of one of these roads between Xianyang and Sichuan province in the West remain today. Rocks and palace architecture survive at Jieshi on the coast of the Bohai Sea in Liaoning, the xinggong most distant from the capital. Announced by two rocks that rise from the sea as sides of an entryway, the coastal palatial area has been excavated as ten interrelated courtyards, most of which had building remains (figure 2.11). Ceramic tiles uncovered at Jieshi Palace confirm either that craftsmen from Xianyang worked here or that their products were sent to the coast of Liaoning province for installation.31

Objects uncovered at all sites associated with the First Emperor confirm his vision of empire. Weights, money, and inscriptions prove that he unified weights and meas- ures and established a national currency and a national script. The last made it possible for documents to be written and read by anyone, regardless of dialect. Qin Shi Huangdi also established a central government in his capital and divided the empire into commanderies, further dividing them into prefectures. He had canals dug in order to trans- port goods. He attempted to define the borders and protect his country by enclosing it in a Great Wall. Although the wall never stretched continuously across the approximately

3,000-kilometer northern border, the First Emperor’s intent was to join preexisting walls of former states into a single protective wall. He deserves credit for the idea of a bounded nation, separate from nations beyond its borders, and per- haps for understanding the symbolic power of a wall for China.

The First Emperor did not accomplish his goals by being a benevolent ruler. He resettled 120,000 families from defeated states to serve him in the capital, conscripted hundreds of thousands in his building projects, and is said to have burned books of which he did not approve. Assassination attempts on his life occurred with regularity, but none was successful. He died in his fiftieth year in 210 during one of his inspection tours, not having realized nearly what he hoped to accom- plish. His minister Li Si kept the death a secret as long as pos- sible, returning the body to the capital in a covered carriage filled with salted fish to disguise the smell of its more valuable contents.32

No single tomb in China has aroused as much interest or has been excavated or studied as intensely as the First Emperor’s. For two thousand years, anyone who passed the truncated, pyramidal mound in Lintong county knew that China’s First Emperor lay beneath it. The contents that continue to come out of the ground since the announcement of the 7,000 life-sized terra-cotta warriors in 1976 are so staggering that one indeed believes reports that 700,000 men labored there and that 16,000 men carried away 42,000 tons of earth supplied by 200 diggers over a period of 300 days.

The mausoleum was begun in 246 when Prince Zheng became King of Qin. Only the squarish mound, approximately

2.11. Remains of Jieshi Palace, Shibeidi, Suizhong, Liaoning, on coast of Bohai Sea, Qin dynasty

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350 meters on each side, is above ground. No architecture has been found on it. Stairs led to the top. It is the central focus of a double-walled funerary precinct, the outer wall 6.21 kilometers in perimeter with a gate in each face and the inner wall 3.87 kilometers in perimeter with two north gates and one at each of the other sides. It is not as extensive as some royal funerary sectors of the past or future in China, no doubt because neither the emperor nor his dynasty endured long enough to realize his vision. Still, remains and literary descriptions indicate extensive construction above ground (figure 2.12). The two walls and the contents of pits suggest comparisons with the double wall and underground spaces of the tomb of King Cuo of Zhongshan (see figure 2.7). Beneath the mound the burial chamber remains sealed.

Records of the Grand Historian tells us that the tomb builders

dug down to the third layer of underground springs and poured in bronze to make the outer coffin. Replicas of palaces, scenic towers, and the hundred officials, as well as rare utensils and wonderful objects, were brought to fill up the tomb. Craftsmen were ordered to set up crossbows and arrows, rigged so they would immediately shoot down anyone attempting to break in. Mercury was used to fashion imitations of the hundred rivers, the Yellow River and the Yangzi, and the seas, constructed in such a way that they seemed to flow. Above were representations of all the heavenly bodies; below, the features of the earth. “Man-fish”

oil was used for lamps, which were calculated to burn for a long time without going out.33

This kind of replication of aspects of life in the microcosmic world of the tomb would be standard funerary practice for the rest of premodern Chinese history.

As has been the practice in China, and as occurred during excavation of the First Emperor’s palaces, the underground areas were numbered as they were opened. Pit 1, still not com- pletely excavated, is 14,240 square meters and contains more than seven thousand terra-cotta warriors and horses, twenty wooden chariots, and about four thousand bronze weapons. The L-shaped pit 2 is 6,000 square meters and has only infantry. Pit 3, 520 square meters, includes the elite soldiers and horses. Pit 4 was found empty. Other subterranean pits contain small numbers of terra-cotta officials, weapons, tools, 150 sets of stone armor, 50 stone helmets, a 212-kilogram bronze tripod, and cranes and other bronze birds.

Qin Shi Huangdi’s own burial chamber has not been entered, perhaps because of the mercury (or cinnabar) believed, based on Sima Qian’s account, to have been used to preserve his corpse; after more than two millennia of concealment the atmosphere may be toxic. But perhaps it is because the aura of the First Emperor’s architecture holds unique intrigue even among the myriad blockbuster finds that continue to emerge from China’s soil. Moreover, the parts of the tomb beyond the burial chamber are far from completely uncovered. In 2002,

2.12. Plan of tomb complex of First Emperor, Qin dynasty, Lintong, Shaanxi

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using remote sensing, archaeologists detected that the soil was not uniform throughout the mound. Soil samples revealed that the mound is not a single entity but rather two layers made of different materials, both of rammed earth, the inner finer and of thinner layers than the outer. 3-D scanning determined more precisely where the boundaries between inner and outer layers are. Also found under the mound in 2002 were pieces of ceramic tile of the kind used in roofs.34

Excavation of the royal cemetery of Qi near the capital Linzi in Shandong province in the twenty-first century also sheds light on the tomb of the First Emperor. Archaeologists found the burial chamber interfaced sub- and supraground levels. They called this tomb style qizhong, rising into the mound. Similar burials were employed in Chu at Ma’anshan tomb 1 and at Pingliangtai tomb 16, suggesting the kind of layered con- struction beneath the mound also observed beneath the mound of King Cuo of Zhongshan. Roof tiles uncovered beneath the mound in 2002 may be from an ancestral or sacrificial temple on the mound, but it is also possible that roofed architecture was inside the mound: the use of the mound to conceal passage in and out of the tomb also is possible.

Construction underground will continue to change or refine our understanding of Chinese architecture until the final tomb in China is excavated. One writes based on infor- mation gleaned from excavation in combination with tex- tual sources about Chinese architecture of centuries BCE, but always with the understanding that one new find may explain or alter much that has been written to inform us of what we do not yet know.

Architecture was crucial to Qin Shi Huangdi’s vision of em- pire, but his fifteen-year reign was far too short to achieve it. The most important period for this implementation would be the next two hundred years, the period known as the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE). The purpose of a capital, role of the palace, and designs of ritual architecture and tombs con- structed in the first two Han centuries would then be carried forward for the rest of Chinese imperial history.

Even though the First Emperor worshiped at sacred spots and established palaces across the land, part of his vision was that the capital was the supreme city. Precedents for this con- cept emerged in the Eastern Zhou dynasty when each state had a designated palace-city. The understanding of the role of the

city and its architecture was guided by writings of the first mil- lennium BCE that declared the ruler’s mandate to reign from the center of the world and an officialdom with subsidiary political and social roles around him. This central position of the ruler was envisioned in the concept of Wangcheng, a plan that was realized a few times in the first millennium BCE and would guide conceptions of the imperial city thereafter. Up to the Qin dynasty, the most important centers of production were also capitals, for the role of the capital and its architec- ture was to serve its state or empire. Through the third century BCE, the greatest monumental architecture of China above ground was also in cities, but already construction was emerg- ing in places visited by the emperor outside his capital such as on sacred peaks. Underground and outside, but near the ruler’s city, tombs and ancestral temples signaled social relationships as clear as the location of a palace in its capital.

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In contrast to the political complexity of the Warring States period, the four hundred years that would follow the brief unification under the Qin dynasty divide themselves into two parts on either side of an interregnum: Former or Western Han (206 BCE‒ 9 CE), roughly the final two centuries BCE, and Latter or Eastern Han (25‒220), roughly the first two centuries CE, with the period 9–23 known as the Xin dynasty or Wang Mang interregnum. The designations Former and Latter are self-evident. The geographic labels refer to the locations of the primary capitals, Chang’an in the West and Luoyang in the East, near the cities with those names and in the same sequence as the capitals of the Western and Eastern Zhou dynasty. Han is the earliest period from which six kinds of Chinese archi- tecture remain: city, palace, imperial ritual space, tomb, rock- carved structure, and garden.

In addition to buildings, three kinds of images that dom- inated knowledge about Han architecture in the twentieth century continue to aid our understanding: relief sculpture, usually dated to the second century CE and primarily from funerary architecture; freestanding pillars known as que that sometimes form the two sides of an entry; and mingqi, small- scale structures excavated in tombs.

Han Chang’an: The First Emperor’s Vision Realized

The phrase Han cheng Qinzhi (Han inherited the Qin system) has been a premise of Chinese architectural history.1 There is inherent logic in this statement, for the First Emperor’s capital, palaces, and tomb are across the Wei River from or in the vicinity of their Han counterparts; Han saw, destroyed, and in some cases reused them. More important, excavation of the first Han capital and its architecture confirms how much of the Qin vision of the role of architecture in an empire was implemented by Liu Bang (r. 206–195), the founding emperor of the Han dynasty, at his capital Chang’an.

A City of Palaces Plans and palaces of Western Han Chang’an have been drawn for more than a thousand years. A map from the first half of the fourteenth century shows the irregular shape of the city’s outer wall (figure 3.1). The straight wall on the east, sharp bends of the north and south walls, and lengths of walls are confirmed by a twenty-first-century plan based on excavation (figure 3.2). Dimensions of the outer wall recorded

in premodern writings about the city also are confirmed by excavation: the 12–16-meter-wide outer wall had a perimeter of 25.7 kilometers divided roughly as 7.2 kilometers on the north, six kilometers on the east, 7.6 on the south, and 4.9 on the west. The city had three gates on each side, and each was wide enough to accommodate at least three side-by-side carriages. The number and positions of gates and carriage- track lengths in a ruler’s city are stipulated in “Kaogongji.” However, Chang’an’s outer wall does not follow the directive of being square. A desire to understand the irregular plan gave rise to popular explanations: perhaps it represented Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, and the river running through it was the Milky Way. Perhaps, however, the unusual shape was the result of pragmatism whereby the northern wall ran along the Wei River and the jut in the southern wall was to enclose the Qin palace Xinglegong, which was reused and renamed when the founder of the Han dynasty, Liu Bang (256–1 BCE), built his city.2

Han Chang’an had six palace complexes, five inside the city walls and one on the exterior. We noted in chapter 2 that Qin Shi Huangdi had Xianyang Palace, Epang Palace, six palaces representing those of the six conquered states, and additional palaces and traveling palaces, so the number of palatial com- plexes in Han Chang’an does not seem large. However, fully two-thirds of the city of Chang’an inside its walls was occu- pied by palace architecture. No past capital except perhaps Xianyang had so much imperial architecture inside its outer walls, nor would any in the future. The ratio of palace to outer city around it at Yanshi of the Shang dynasty was 1:4.3 and then decreased to 1:6. At Qufu of the Lu state the ratio was 1:5.5; at Anyi of Wei it was 1:5.1; and at Luoyang of Eastern Zhou it was nearly 1:10. The main palace complex of the Eastern Han capital Luoyang would occupy about one-third of the capital, as would the Northern Wei (386–534) palace-city of Luoyang. Thereafter the palace-city becomes a smaller and smaller part of the outer city of a Chinese capital. At Sui-Tang Chang’an and Northern Song Bianliang, the ratio was about 1:5. At Ming-Qing Beijing, it would be 1:5.8.3 The capital as a city of imperial architecture was the first way that Han implemented the First Emperor’s vision.

All six Chang’an palaces are described in historical sources.4 Three have been extensively excavated. Changle Palace, located on the site of the First Emperor’s Xingle Palace, was the largest. The Qin ruler had built a bridge across the Wei River so that

CHAPTER 3

Han Architecture

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he could divide his time between Xingle Palace on the south side and Xianyang Palaces on the north. Xingle Palace had ter- races the emperor mounted to observe the heavens and shoot swallows, as well as ponds, and pools. Twelve enormous bronze statues of men stood at a palace gate when Han sacked the city. Han emperor Liu Bang began refurbishing the former Qin palace in 202 BCE and finished in 200 BCE. Changle Palace was 7 square kilometers and occupied about one-sixth of the space inside the city. Major thoroughfares led in and out through gate-towers (que). In 200 BCE, just as work was winding down at Changle Palace, construction began at Weiyang Palace. In 198 BCE the Han emperor moved his primary residence to Weiyanggong, and Changlegong became mainly a residence for imperial women. A covered way joined the two complexes.

According to Records of the Grand Historian, Liu Bang aspired for Weiyang Palace to be more grandiose than anything built by his Qin predecessors.5 It was completed under his succes- sor. There were forty-three halls, thirteen ponds or pools, six hills, some of them presumably artificial, and ninety-five gates. Weiyanggong remained the premier palace in Han Chang’an. It

comprised front and back palace complexes, each with several buildings on a north-south axial line (figure 3.3). The formation is the next in the sequence of palatial architecture that begins in the Shang dynasty with complexes such as Panlongcheng (see figure 1.10), continues with palatial-style architecture in Zhouyuan such as at Fengchu (see figure 1.12), and culminates in the Three Front Halls and Back Halls of the Forbidden City (see figure i.1). The largest building foundation of the front palace complex of Weiyanggong measures 350 meters north to south by 200 meters east to west, large enough to hold thou- sands of men.6 The Weiyanggong site measures 2.15 by 2.25 kilo- meters. It occupied about one-seventh of the area inside the capital walls, so that by the time it was built, more than one- third of Chang’an comprised palaces. Its walls were between 7 and 8 meters thick. Fortified towers covered the four corners. An armory was built between Changle and Weiyang Palaces.

Gui Palace, due north on the western side of Weiyanggong, was constructed during the reign of Han emperor Wudi (r. 141–87 BCE). Enclosed on three sides by streets and on the west by the city wall, Guigong occupied an area of 1.84 meters

3.1. Plan of Western Han Chang’an. From Li Haowen 1979, juan 1/5 3.2. Plan of Western Han Chang’an based on excavation

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north-to-south by 900 meters east-to-west and was further enclosed by its own rammed-earth wall that was 4 meters thick at the base.7 Seven palatial foundations were uncovered by the early twenty-first century. North Palace (Beigong) was begun under Liu Bang and was completed sometime before 163 BCE. It contained apartments for the empress dowager and elderly con- cubines or those who had fallen out of favor with the emperor. At certain times during the Western Han dynasty, the crown prince resided there. Beigong also was the location of ceremo- nies to the spirits during the reign of emperor Wudi.8 Little is known about the fifth intramural palace, Mingguanggong. It was built during the reign of Han Wudi and seems to have been abandoned during the Pingdi reign (1 BCE‒ 6 CE). The last Chang’an palace, Jianzhanggong, outside the walled city, was a pleasure palace of highly elaborated buildings and scenery and a ritual center. Its landscape included replicas of Isles of the Immortals, suggesting the emperor might have communicated with the spirits here.9

Many of the buildings named in premodern records of Han Chang’an’s palaces end with the suffix tai, meaning platform, as opposed to dian or tang, which translate as hall. The word taixie (literally, “platform kiosk”) occurs in literary sources begin- ning in the Warring States period. No Han wooden building survives, but excavated foundations from Chang’an palaces suggest that taixie refers to a timber-frame structure elevated on a tall platform with an earthen core, and thus that this kind of construction was employed in the final two centuries BCE (figure 3.4).

Imperial Tombs Han imperial tombs were in or near Chang’an, and they were equally integral to the construction of the city. Nine Western Han tombs form a coherent imperial unit that shields the capital to its north and northwest. Two provided responding forces to the southeast, all eleven of them within 30 kilometers of the capital. (Several short-lived rulers of

Western Han did not receive imperial burials.) Each imperial tomb consisted of four parts: the mounds, one for the emperor and a smaller one for the empress, located within a precinct known as the funerary precinct (lingyuan) that may have been walled; aboveground ritual halls; the funerary city (lingyi), believed to have been walled, where workers lived during tomb construction and where tomb caretakers continued to reside after imperial interment; and auxiliary tombs that could include burial plots awarded to officials for service to the emperor or servant/slave tombs. Sacrificial burial had terminated by this time.

Changling, tomb complex of the Han founding emperor, who died in 195 BCE, and his empress, who died in 180 BCE, was the hub of all subsequent Western Han imperial burials. Its funerary precinct was 3.12 kilometers in perimeter. Traces of architecture at all corners but the northeastern suggest towers, probably parts of the enclosing wall. Other pieces of architecture and ceramic tiles marked with numbers are believed to be remains of ritual structures inside the funerary precinct.10 The funerary city north of the burial precinct was walled only on the north, south, and west sides, a situation described in records of the capital and confirmed by exca- vation.11 Auxiliary tombs were to the east. They included large tombs that belonged to loyal ministers of the first Han emperor as well as simple burials, presumably for servants. Yangjiawan tomb 4 is a large tomb that some believe belongs to the famous Han general Zhou Bo (d. 169) or his son. If this is true, then we surmise that auxiliary burial plots were awarded after an emperor’s demise, even as tombs of sub- sequent rulers already existed or were under construction. L-shaped in plan, Yangjiawan tomb 4 has numerous narrow burial pits at every side, a plan in use in Qin and Western Han but not later.12

Anling, the tomb complex of the second Han emperor Huidi and his wife, is due west of his parents’ graves. The names of the first two Han imperial tombs may be taken from

3.4. Theoretical reconstruction of exterior and interior sections of building with taixie foundation

3.3. Reconstruction plan of Weiyanggong front hall complex, Western Han Chang’an

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the characters chang and an, which form the name of the capi- tal, resulting in Changling and Anling; ling means royal tumu- lus.13 The placement positioned subsequent emperors right and left of Liu Bang in the manner of successive sons who, in a traditional Chinese-style house, reside according to birth order in rooms right and left of the central room in which homage is paid to the ancestors. The placement also sug- gests the implementation of the zhaomu system. Originating during the reigns of the sixth and seventh Zhou kings at the beginning of the tenth century BCE, and intended specifically for funerary temples, the zhaomu system prescribed that the founder of a dynastic line be positioned in the center, with the zhao (temple, and later, after the destruction of the temple, the tablet), for the second ruler, to the founder’s left, and the mu, for the third ruler, to the founder’s right. Subsequently the fourth and sixth rulers would be represented by zhao and thus to the left, and the fifth and seventh, as mu, would be to the right. Anling was appropriately placed to the ruler’s left (as he faced north), and the tomb of the third ruler was to the right, although as explained below, far to the south.14

Two puppet infant emperors reigned under the guard of the founding emperor Liu Bang’s widow, Empress Lü, when the second emperor predeceased his mother. The third Han emperor came to power only after eliminating competition from the empress’s relatives, ascending the throne in 180 BCE. He was buried thirty-seven years later in a tomb called Baling, named after the Ba River along whose bank it was situated. This first of two southeastern Han royal tombs may have been the result of a desire to be distant from the woman who had usurped power for the previous eight years and to counterbalance evil forces that might emanate were it closer to Empress Lü’s grave.

Baling is the first imperial burial carved directly into nat- ural rock.15 It nevertheless had the four components of a Han royal tomb. Yangling, the tomb of the fourth Han emperor, who reigned from 188 to 141 BCE, has received tremendous attention since the 1990s when hundreds of naked figurines (possibly originally clothed with perishable materials) were excavated in pits adjacent to the tumulus.16 Excavation revealed workers and livestock among the funerary sculpture, the latter presumably for food in the afterlife. Narrow, paral- lel approach ramps of the kind leading up to Yangjiawan were dug on all four sides of the tumuli. Yangling has individual, squarish funerary precincts for the emperor and empress, his

larger and to the west. The mounds may have been planned to imitate the ruling pair sitting on a throne. Sacrificial halls were south of both mounds. A circular, stone compass divided into quadrants by bisecting lines was placed on an imaginary line that would have run between the two mounds.

Maoling, the tomb of Western Han’s most famous emperor, Wudi (156–87 BCE), has not been excavated. Wudi’s tomb was positioned so far west beyond Anling that before the fall of the dynasty, three additional Han imperial tombs would be between it and Anling. Han Wudi reigned more than fifty-four years, more than twice as long as any other emperor of Western Han, and thus had a long time to spend on the construction of his tomb; perhaps he anticipated filling all the space to the east between his tomb and Anling with aboveground architecture or with auxiliary burials. Maoling’s fame is further enhanced by one auxiliary tomb, approximately 2 kilometers to the east, awarded by Wudi to his young military officer Huo Qubing.

Huo Qubing rose from horse boy to grand marshal by age eighteen. By that time, Huo had led an army of eight thousand; two years later he would lead an army of ten thou- sand. His most illustrious victories were in the Northwest beyond Gansu, where he is credited with a decisive victory against northern peoples who had plagued the Han and earlier Chinese states for centuries. When Huo died in the area known through much of Chinese history as the Western Regions, Wudi recognized his valor with a tomb so close to his own and erected one of China’s most famous secular mon- umental statues in front of it, Horse Trampling the Barbarian. The statue became a symbol of China’s triumph over the threat of foreign peoples. Historical records state that large stone sculptures of animals were placed on Huo’s tumulus in imitation of exotic creatures who dwelt in the Qilian Mountains near Penglai, a mythical isle of the immortals in the territory of Huo’s victories; many of them are still present in the early-twentieth-century photograph (figure 3.5). Huo’s tumulus is believed to be a re-creation of Penglai, similar to the configuration of incense burners on whose tops exotic animals amid the Isles of the Immortals are often carved.17 In 2011 the tomb of Han Wudi’s grandson Liu He (92–59 BCE), who reigned as emperor for twenty-seven days before being dethroned, was opened in Nanchang, Jiangxi province. It contains a lacquer-framed mirror that may be the earliest “portrait” of Confucius.18

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The most extensively excavated Han funerary city is at Duling, the tomb of the seventh Han emperor Xuandi (r. 74–49 BCE) and his empress, and the second imperial burial southeast of the capital.19 The Duling site measures approximately 4 kilometers north to south by about 3 kilometers east to west. The emperor’s funerary precinct was approximately 430 meters square, and his empress’s was about three-fourths that size. Ceremonial or sacrificial halls were due south of each mound. In addition to the two funerary precincts that originally were walled with gates at each side, there were dozens of auxiliary burials to the east, in the same positions relative to the mounds as those at Yangling. There was, in addition, a funerary town about 2,100 by 500 meters, located about 2.5 kilometers north- west of the funerary precinct, where workers lived during the years of construction and caretakers resided afterward. Its population is estimated to have exceeded 300,000.20 Southeast of the emperor’s tomb and southwest of the empress’s, and adjacent to each, were self-contained areas with buildings for funerary rites. Each had eastern and western gates and mul- tiple entries for access from the south. Xuandi’s ceremonial precinct had a main hall for sacrifices and more than nine courtyards of buildings to its east. All the structures were ele- vated on pounded-earth platforms, and many had tile floors. The next three Han emperors were buried north of the city on the western side of Anling.

This is the information available to determine whether Western Han imperial tombs realized the vision Qin Shi Huangdi had for his own tomb. Comparisons may begin with the mound. The First Emperor is buried under a mound that was built up beyond its original height. The tumuli of Han

founder Liu Bang and Han Wudi were natural mounds. Qin Shi Huangdi’s tumulus was enclosed by two concentric, rec- tangular walls, the plan we have observed in the necropolis of King Cuo of the Zhongshan kingdom (see figure 2.7) whereas at Changling the funerary precinct and the funerary city were separately walled, a system maintained through the Western Han dynasty. It is unknown whether the First Emperor had plans to extend his tomb complex to a funerary city and park to the extent Han emperors did. The walls of a Han impe- rial funerary precinct were pierced by four gates known as simamen, a term usually translated official gate, and a pair of que stood beyond the wall outside each gate. It is believed that the east sima gate, the one most often in the direction of the auxiliary tombs, was the most important.21 At the First Emperor’s tomb, the pits with terra-cotta warriors were to the east.

The most important evidence of the realization of a Qin vision in Western Han Chang’an was uncovered in 1993. In that year a research team found that a straight line could be drawn northward from Ziwu Valley, south of the capital, through the south-central gate of Chang’an, continue along the longest street in the capital, which brought it between Changlegong and Weiyanggong in the southern half of the city, through the north city wall, between the tombs of the founding emperor of the Han dynasty and his wife, and onward to a bowl-shaped depression believed to be the location of Tianqi Shrine.22 The distance between Ziwu Valley and the depression is 74 kilometers. Further research determined that the line could be extended almost eight times that distance, joining a Han military commandery on the Yangzi River in the South to a

3.5. Horse Trampling the Barbarian, tomb of Huo Qubing (d. 117 !"#), Maoling, Xi’an, Shaanxi

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commandery today in Inner Mongolia at the northern bend of the Yellow River. There is little doubt that the funerary mounds of the dynastic founder and his wife were sited west and east, respectively, of the main thoroughfare of the city he had taken as his capital; that they were intended to correspond to Changle and Weiyang Palaces to the south; or that the water of Ziwu Valley provided a symbolic southern shield for the city. Further, a cross axis could be plotted to connect the remains of the First Emperor’s capital at Xianyang with the coast of Shandong province, where Qin Shi Huangdi had erected a stele to mark the eastern terminus of his empire (figure 3.6). Centered between the northern and southern and eastern and western boundaries of the empire, the Han capital was sym- bolically the center of the ruler’s domain and the pivot of the four quarters of the universe. This no doubt was the vision of the First Emperor, even if the early Han rulers conceived of it as their own.

Ritual Architecture Fourteen foundations believed to be Han ritual buildings have been excavated at Chang’an.23 They are identified as Mingtang (Numimous Hall), Biyong (Jade-ring Moat), Lingtai (Spirit Altar), Taixue (Imperial Academy), Jiumiao (Nine Temples), Yuanqiu (Round Mound), and a pair of altars or temples for sacrifices to soil and grain.

Mingtang is the most intriguing Chinese ritual structure. Among explanations of the Mingtang, its first character ming, translated here as numinous, is a straightforward one: “a build- ing imitating the structure of the cosmos.”24 What this means, specifically, the configuration of rooms of the Mingtang, their symbolism, and how the architecture may have symbolized the heavens, is debated to this day.

Texts about the Mingtang most frequently refer to rooms in groups of four, five, nine, or twelve. The number four is associated with the four directions, seasons, colors, animals, and other quadruples. Five is the number of xing (phases of the fundamental entity known as qi: metal, wood, water, fire, and earth). It is also the number of sides of a quadrilateral plus a center. Nine, four plus five, is a number associated with the Chinese emperor and is three squared. A three-squared sur- face, a magic square, divides into twelve units, three on each of its four sides, so that as one progresses around the perimeter, one can make twelve stops, one for each lunar month. Twelve also is the number of divisions, known as watches, of the day

in China.25 These four numbers and the circle are combined in all proposed reconstructions of the Mingtang from any period. Records say that Western Zhou rulers constructed Mingtang and that Qin Shi Huangdi built a Mingtang that was the model for Western Han ritual structures.

Remains south of Western Han Chang’an have been identi- fied as either a Mingtang or a composite ritual hall in which the functions of Mingtang, Biyong, and Lingtai were performed, constructed by Wang Mang (45 BCE–23 CE), who usurped the Han throne and ruled from 9 to 23 CE and is known to have built ritual architecture south of the capital.26 An often-pub- lished reconstruction of this Mingtang has porch-like pro- jections from each room on the first floor, five rooms on the second floor, and one room on the third level (figure 3.7).

One of the fundamental tenets of any discussion of the Mingtang and some other ritual structures is the combination of circle and square, with the circle, which represents heaven,

3.6. Imaginary line from Ziwu Valley in the South to Tianqi Shrine in the North, running between Changle and Weiyang Palaces and the tombs of the first Han emperor and his empress

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above and the square, representing earth, below. The combi- nation of the two shapes into one ground plan and the lack of explicit evidence such as an inscription found on-site to con- firm what the architectural remains were has led to the sugges- tion of a composite ritual structure. The circular platform is an important justification for associations with Biyong, the “jade- ring moat,” the character bi being a jade ring in the possession only of high-ranking officials. Inscriptions of the Zhou dynasty describe Biyong as a circular (and perhaps artificial) lake where rituals were performed.27 The correspondence between this configuration and the function of Biyong as the place imperial princes were educated is unclear. The corner towers in the reconstruction are proposed to be lingtai, platforms that could be ascended to observe the heavens.

The structural group known as the Nine Temples is more certainly associated with Wang Mang than the remains shown as figure 3.7, for nothing like the Nine Temples had previously been constructed. Until Wang Mang’s Xin dynasty, the max- imum number of temples erected to commemorate a ruler’s ancestors was seven.28 Nor is there evidence of a Nine Temples complex after Han. The excavation site south of Chang’an identified as the Nine Temples is shown in figure 3.2. This unique configuration in Chinese architectural design is a rare example of an imperial architectural form that disappears. A Han ritual structure also stood in Chong’an, Fujian province. It is believed to be the ancestral temple of the state of Min that included space for the zhaomu tablets.29

Han Luoyang and Other Cities: Realistic Imperial Vision and Nonimperial Presence

Han Luoyang by any measure was neither as grandiose nor as ambitious, nor was it as large, as Chang’an, but its population was twice Chang’an’s. Luoyang became the primary Han capital after 23 CE, the year Wang Mang was murdered in Chang’an. Han emperor Guangwu (r. 25–57) moved his capital eastward as the Zhou had done a thousand years earlier, not to the Zhou capital site but to palaces that had been constructed in Qin times and used by the founding emperor of the Han dynasty. The outer wall of approximately 13 kilometers in perimeter took a roughly rectangular shape of 3:2 proportions, the Golden Ratio, and because of the Chinese units in which its size was rendered it was nicknamed “the 9:6 city.”30 Han Guangwu walled the city at the outset, presumably with the intent of positioning it between the Mang mountains in the North and the Luo River in the South. The city had only two palaces, a significant departure from the Qin and Western Han capitals, which were interconnected by a covered passageway that made secret imperial movement between them possible (figure 3.8). An important decision about imperial urbanism was taking place. If rulers of Western Han experimented with use of multiple palaces, it was resolved by the beginning of the first century CE that a Chinese emperor should reign from a single palace. Although two palace areas existed at Han Luoyang, one was the primary location of imperial residence and governance

3.7. Theoretical reconstruction of Mingtang, early first century !"

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at any given time. After the Han dynasty, there never again would be more than one palace at the imperial city.

The city wall had twelve gates, as prescribed in “Kaogongji” and as had been implemented at Han Chang’an, but at Luoyang they were distributed as three on the eastern and western walls, four on the south, and two on the north. Several of the most major streets, five that ran north-south and five east-west, emanated from the gates, with a continuous street that traversed the southern part of the city from an east to a west gate. Twenty-four streets are named in texts about Han Luoyang. Excavation has shown them to be between 20 and 40 meters wide.31

Luoyang through history is as important a city for excava- tion as Chang’an, but unlike the extensive information from Erlitou or Yanshi for the pre-Han period, the Eastern Han capital and its monuments are difficult to access. The palatial counterparts of Western Han Weiyanggong have not been theoretically drawn. The locations of the twelve Eastern Han imperial tombs are known, but they remain unexcavated. Five emperors were laid to rest in what is sometimes called the northern tomb group, east of present-day Mengjin county and north of the Mang mountains; the other six are south of Yanshi county. The last emperor, who began his reign in 189 at the age of eight and abdicated in 220, was buried outside Luoyang the year of his death in 234, probably near Jiaozuo in Henan. The first eleven tombs had mounds.

Mingtang and Biyong were constructed at Han Luoyang, and the foundation of the Lingtai remains. It had a paved, ceramic-tile floor and a pounded-earth, square platform above it. Remains suggest that it was of taixie construction. Some believe that relief sculpture of the Eastern Han period offers clues about the appearance of ritual altars. Based on the assumption that altars were outside, combinations of trees, que, and men bearing offerings have led to the suggestion that a depiction on the wall of a late Eastern Han tomb in Dahuting in Mi county, Henan, and one on the wall of a tomb in Nanyang, Henan, show worship at altars (figure 3.9).32

Gardens had been integral to the Chinese concept of a pal- ace at least since the time of the First Emperor, who had park- land with animals for his personal use.33 Palaces with adjacent gardens survive far south of Chang’an in locations where king- doms continued to wield power in the second century BCE even though China had been unified. Palaces have been excavated from the Nanyue kingdom near Guangzhou in Guangdong

3.8. Plan of Eastern Han Luoyang based on excavation

3.9. Worshipers at outside altar, on rubbing of relief sculpture from tomb excavated in Nanyang, Henan province, Eastern Han dynasty

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province and from the state of Min near Chong’an in Fujian.34 A shipyard dating to the Qin and early Han period also has been uncovered in Guangzhou. It was adjacent to the palace and gardens, suggesting it was controlled by the local ruler. 35

A strong national economy and unprecedented commerce gave rise to important cities outside the capitals in Han times. Some, such as Linzi and Handan, had their roots in urban centers of the Eastern Zhou period (see figures 2.3a, 2.3c). Others, also with earlier building periods, in today’s Nanjing in Jiangsu province, Hefei in Anhui, and Chengdu in Sichuan, have remained important Chinese cities since the Han. Nanyang in Henan, the location of the tomb whose relief is shown in figure 3.9, was about 1.4 kilometers square with an enclosing wall of 6 meters in width at the base. Military com- manderies, introduced by the First Emperor, spread across the Han empire from Xinjiang to Mongolia to North Korea, some with fortified walls and defense systems. A type of construc- tion known as wubi or wubao emerged in commanderies at this time. Wubi were walled compounds, often with corner towers that could be ascended for defensive lookout. They usually were surrounded by moats and included residential architec- ture, perhaps for the main clans associated with them and their service personnel. The fortified structures are believed

to be represented by small-scale architecture that was used as burial goods and are seen in relief sculpture that lined walls of Han tombs (figure 3.10). Defense of China’s northern border, symbolized by the Great Wall, was a priority of Han China, following the intentions of the First Emperor; wubi often were located along the Great Wall. A few mud-brick lookout towers survive from the Han dynasty at strategic locations or passes along the Great Wall.

Han Tombs outside the Capitals

The number of Han tombs has been estimated at 100,000, of which at least 20 percent had been opened by the beginning of the twenty-first century.36 In spite of this huge number, nonimperial tombs divide into a small number of types. One of the earliest is the vertical pit tomb, often with wooden, plank-lined chambers, a form with several millennia of history prior to the Han dynasty. The famous tombs of the Marquise of Dai (d. ca. 170 BCE), her husband (d. 186 BCE), and perhaps their son (d. 168 BCE), in Mawangdui, near Changsha, Henan province, are examples. Tomb 1, the marquise’s, was 19.5 by 17.8 meters and filled in with charcoal and clay to preserve its interior. The tomb received international attention in the early 1970s when excavation revealed her well-preserved corpse, silk garments, a facedown painting believed to be a guide for souls in the afterlife, nested lacquer coffins, and more than fourteen hundred burial goods. Tomb 3, whose occupant died in 168, contained some of China’s earliest silk maps, one military and one topographic, that use cartographic keys, and one map of a four-sided, walled city with orthogonal streets.37

A second type of tomb constructed in the Western Han period belonged to higher-ranking royalty. Examples sur- vive in burials of kings (wang) and queens, sometimes called princes and princesses, of Chu in the vicinity of Xuzhou in Jiangsu province and of Liang in Mangdangshan, Yongcheng, Henan province. Large tombs with complicated plans are not surprising in Xuzhou, for the first emperor of the Western Han dynasty was born there. His younger brother was the first Han king of Chu. Subterranean Chu royal tombs carved into natural rock and accessed from ground level, all dated to the Western Han period, spread in and around the city today. One of the most carefully studied is at Beidongshan.38 The tomb is a rare example of a two-level, underground burial space (figure 3.11). Entered via an extremely long corridor,

3.10. Burial object with high central tower and four corner towers believed to represent a wubi, excavated in Leitai, Wuwei, Gansu

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the tomb is divided into three sections with side niches and rooms off the first and second, followed by a two-room rear section. Walls and ceilings are primarily stone with some clay and plaster. Twelve steps lead from the middle section to a large area 2.98 meters below it. An armory, storage chamber, two lavatories, storage for banquet utensils, entertainment hall, kitchen, courtyard with a well, and ice-storage room are arranged in four rows.

The Mangdang mountains (shan), about 35 kilometers from the center of Yongcheng, in Henan, are the location of five pairs of tombs and at least four others, among which are those of kings and queens of Liang, also relatives of the ruling house of Han.39 As at Beidongshan, the Yongcheng-area tombs are carved right into natural rock and entered via long ramps. The tombs of King Xiao (r. 168–143 BCE), the oldest son of the third Han emperor and younger brother of the fourth emperor (buried at Baling and Yangling, respectively), and Xiao’s wife buried due south of him, are among the oldest. These two tombs plus their aboveground funerary precinct that originally was enclosed by an earthen wall of 900 meters north to south by 750 meters east to west, are at Bao’anshan. The aboveground sacrificial precinct included a screen wall, front and back halls believed to be for audience and residence, respectively, a funer- ary city for those who tended the sacrificial area, and a funer- ary precinct. Underground, the tombs are characterized by a

corridor that encloses the main area (figure 3.12). The tomb of Queen Li consists of thirty-four rooms, allowing for the kind of diversification of function at the Beidongshan tomb in Xuzhou.

A third type of Western Han tomb used for royalty is also cut into natural rock, but the burial is at entry level. It can be described as a horizontal pit tomb, the type used at Baling. The tombs of Han king Liu Sheng (d. 113 BCE), a son of the fourth Han emperor Jingdi who was buried at Yangling, and Liu Sheng’s wife, Dou Wan, in Mancheng, Hebei, and the tomb of the King of Lu in Qufu, Shandong, are this type.40

Another type of tomb that appears in the Western Han period is (huangchang) ticou, wooden staves with the yellow flesh (exposed), that is, a wall of stacked wooden stakes that enclose the coffin or nested coffins at the center of a burial chamber.41 One thousand to fifteen hundred pieces of wood, each about a meter in length, are used to form this enclosure. Examples survive at Dabaotai in Beijing, Shuangdun in Anhui, Changsha in Hunan, and Yangzhou in Jiangsu, among other places (figure 3.13). Eventually the form is transformed into a stone structure.

Brick tombs were widespread in the Han dynasty. Tombs made of hollow bricks are constructed earlier, and smaller, solid bricks are used later. Large numbers of both forms with paintings covering their walls and ceilings survive in the

3.11. Infrastructural drawing of tomb of Chu king, Beidongshan, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, second century !"#

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3.12. Plan and side sectional drawings of tomb 2, Bao’anshan, Yongcheng, Henan, Western Han period

3.13. Tomb 1, ticou structure, Western Han Tomb Museum, Yangzhou, Western Han

3.14. Infrastructural drawings of Luoyang tomb 61, from west to east (1) and east to west (2), early Eastern Han dynasty

Side Section from North

1 2

Side Section from South

Plan

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region of Luoyang,42 but examples are found across China. The tomb of Bu Qianqiu, dated to the late Western Han period in Luoyang, is an example. The underground tomb is entered by a ramp on the east with burial of husband and wife in the west. The western location may indicate an understanding of the Han association of that direction with death, further discussed below. North and south of the entry are side chambers with rooms adjacent to them on their eastern sides. Bu Qianqiu’s burial is the earliest evidence of two aspects of Chinese funer- ary culture that will have long histories: Bu and his wife are painted on the walls; a number is painted on each of twenty bricks that extend in sequence across the tomb.43 The mark- ings, which in some tombs are a system other than numbers, indicate that painting was done outside the tomb, presumably in a workshop, and that pieces were carried into the tomb for proper arrangement. The system does not presume literacy, only that one craftsman be able to read numbers or markings. Workshop manufacture also suggests that there was choice in decoration, presumably that the owner in life or survivors after his death made those choices.

The same plan is used in tomb 61 in Shaogou, Luoyang, also dated to the late Western Han period. In the Shaogou tomb, a pillar that supports a pediment stands roughly in the center of the main interior space (figure 3.14). This tomb is known for its mural Two Peaches Kill Three Knights and a scene on the back wall set in mountains that may depict a banquet the night before Liu Bang’s troops took the city of Chang’an.44 Both tombs have star groups on the ceiling to re-create the world outside the tomb in microcosm underground. A tomb pediment in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is believed to

have been part of a tomb of the same structure also from the Luoyang region.45

Tombs constructed with small, solid bricks in Zhu village in Luoyang, at Helinge’er in Inner Mongolia, and at Anping and Wangdu in Hebei represent funerary construction in the Eastern Han period. All are dated to the second century CE or later in the Han dynasty. Each tomb’s murals include proces- sions of men, animals, or horses that move across its walls, and each has at least one barrel (or tunnel) vaulted ceiling, that is, an arched ceiling, constructed of brick or stone that may be intended to imitate wooden or plaster components. The ceilings sometimes are referred to as domes. A dome is a type of vault that is built on a circular base and for which curvature is even throughout. It can be segmented, semicircular, or bul- bous in section. A ceiling that combines the vault and dome is known as a domical vault. In this kind of structure, a dome rises on a square or polygonal base, and the curved surfaces are usually separated by groins. Barrel vaults, domical vaults whose ribs meet at a point at the top and with a flat apex, and domes formed of concentric rings of bricks all existed in the Eastern Han period. Dated evidence from tombs suggests an evolution of the vault from an interior made of wooden planks, the kind used in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, to the use of planks in segments to achieve a ceiling with diagonal sides and a flat apex, used in Western Han tombs in Luoyang (see figure 3.14), to smaller segments, first with wedges and then without them, to the use of tongues that interlock into grooves for stability, to barrel vaults, to domical vaults (figure 3.15). Some of the best examples of domical vaults survive in southeastern China, in Hong Kong and in Guangdong province.

3.15. Evolution of Chinese vaulted ceiling from Warring States period through Eastern Han

a. Plank-beam

e. Tongue-and-groove Joint f. Barrel Vault g. Domical Vault

b. Diagonal-support, Plank-beam

c. Broken-line Wedge-shaped

d. Broken-line Wedge-shaped without insert

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The tombs in Anping, Wangdu, and Helinge’er all have bar- rel-vaulted chambers along their main axes and vaulted rooms at the sides of those chambers (figure 3.16).46 The Helinge’er tomb offers other important information about Han architec- ture. Entered on the east, the 19.85-meter-long interior consists of three main chambers with side niches north and south of the first and second rooms. The murals contain more than 50 scenes and more than 225 inscriptions. An impressively expan- sive re-creation of timber framing from the Han or any later period is painted on the north side-room of the front chamber. One observes floor, side, and ceiling beams, columns, and mul- titiered bracket sets (figure 3.17). Five labeled images of walled cities are painted in a combination of plan and frontal view (figure 3.18). Two wooden bridges supported by bracket sets also are painted, one of which is labeled Juyongguan, the name of a strategic pass of the Great Wall. Inscriptions tell us that the tomb occupant is en route from Fanyang, the city shown in figure 3.18, to accept his new position as colonel-protector of Ningcheng, also represented among the murals. Finally, one finds several examples of que, other towers, and structures that are likely to be granaries.

Another type of Han tomb carved into natural rock is known as yamu (cliff tomb). Different from the Western Han period tombs for kings in Xuzhou, Yongcheng, and Mancheng, in the late Han period, the tomb type known as yamu is most popular in Sichuan.47 Yamu are distinguished by detailed imita- tion of architectural features in the stone interiors. The major- ity are located along rivers and gorges in the Chengdu region. Most are entered through long tunnels. Three to five interior rooms follow the tunnels, with branches to either side (figure 3.19). The caisson ceiling, a formation resembling a lantern ceil- ing and thus sometimes known as a lantern ceiling, and often formed by superimposed quadrilaterals, three-dimensional, multitier bracket sets, elongated bracket-arms, sometimes with pronounced curves or cloud-like patterns, fluted columns, and central pillars are present in the interiors (figures 3.20, 3.21).

Among the three-dimensional ceilings in cliff tombs in Sichuan are those with layers of decreasing size from the top of

the wall to the top of the ceiling, so that the profile appears like a zigzag line. The same type of ceiling is found in stone tombs in Cangshan, Shandong province, dated 151 CE; Maocun in Xuzhou, dated 175; and Anqiu in Shandong, with a date only of Eastern Han.48 The Cangshan tomb is the smallest of the three, consisting of a main chamber and back area divided into two sections. The Anqiu tomb has nine interior rooms. Detailed, three-dimensional carving on its pillar surfaces distinguishes it from the others. The best-studied late Eastern Han tomb is no. 1 in Beizhai village, Yi’nan county, of southern Shandong.49 Its octagonal pillars, pronounced bracket-arms, and the super- imposed quadrilaterals of three-dimensional ceilings above its chambers anticipate tomb construction of the next several centuries (figure 3.22). Lotus flowers painted at the top centers of ceiling sections in a late Eastern Han tomb at Dahuting in Mi county, Henan, are two-dimensional versions of the Yi’nan chamber ceilings.50

Han tombs also survive in Liaoning province. They include some of the earliest excavated Han tombs, uncovered during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the early twentieth century. A stone subterranean tomb excavated in Liaoyang county of Liaoning in 2004 has the earliest evidence of an inverted-V-shaped brace, painted on a building among its murals. This feature will be a hallmark of Chinese and Japanese wooden construction through the eighth century.51

Additional Evidence of Han Architecture

Not surprisingly, the only aboveground architecture that has weathered the two millennia since the Han dynasty is made of brick or stone. It is of two types: freestanding gate-towers or pillar-towers known as que, and offering shrines. About thirty Han que survive, primarily in Henan, Sichuan, and Shandong provinces, and there is one in Beijing.52 Fourteen are dated by inscription from 36 CE to 209–220. It is believed they all were built in pairs. Some, including those on the sacred peak Mount Song in Henan, dated 118, were at the entrances to shrines. Others, such as the Gao Yi que in Ya’an, Sichuan, dated 209, were erected along the approaches to tombs (figure 3.23). Han que divide into two main groups, the first made of stone with a squarish base and stones of diminishing size layer by layer upward to a roof that imitates ceramic tile; and the second presenting more as side-by-side towers, one taller than the other, so that the pair was nicknamed mother-and-child. Que

3.16. Plan of tomb in Anping, Hebei province, second century !"

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3.17. Painting of pillars, beams, and bracket sets, north side room of front chamber, life-size model of Helinge’er tomb, Shengle Museum, Shengle, Inner Mongolia

3.18. Painting of walled town of Fanyang showing o!icial architecture, south wall of central chamber, life-size model of Helinge’er tomb, Shengle Museum, Shengle, Inner Mongolia

3.19. Plan and sectional drawing of tomb 1, Fengtaizui, Qijiang, Santai, Sichuan, Eastern Han

Plan

Side Section

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of both types are surfaces for narrative relief. Some believe que follow the structures of wooden towers that no longer survive, but this cannot be proved.

Que were one of the most important forms of physical evi- dence of Han architecture in the centuries before excavation. The next important body of material used then that is still informational is mingqi. Mingqi refers to a wide variety of burial goods. Thousands of Han mingqi take the form of architec- ture. Sometimes they are called models, but there is no proof that they imitate specific buildings. Architectural mingqi may include specific and accurate building components such as bracket sets or roof tiles, but these features combine in fanciful or exaggerated ways. Decorative features sometimes include human figures and animals that further suggest that mingqi, especially those in the form of towers, were as much symbolic and even fanciful as they were realistic (fig 3.24). The majority of Han earthenware architecture in miniature comes from Eastern Han tombs of the Central Plain, the provinces of Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, but they also have been found in Gansu, Jiangsu, Anhui, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Sichuan. Mingqi in the shapes of tall, slender towers with bowls for water at the bottom are known as shuixie (water kiosks).53

A noteworthy feature of the architectural mingqi is their individuality. Most Chinese funerary art, by contrast, was

3.20. Detail of left side of ceiling, central chamber, tomb 1, Balinpo, Qijiang, Santai, Sichuan, Eastern Han

3.21. Back chamber, tomb 1, Balinpo, Qijiang, Santai, Sichuan, showing fluted central pillar with three-dimensional bracket set with long, curved arms, Eastern Han.

3.22. Octagonal central pillar with long bracket-arms, tomb 1, Yi’nan, late Eastern Han

3.23. Que, mother-and-child style, along approach to tomb of Gao Yi, Ya’an, Sichuan, 209

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3.24. Miniature tower, earthenware with green glaze

3.25. Mingqi in shape of granary, earthenware, Eastern Han. Henan Provincial Museum

3.26. Mortuary shrine of Guo Ju, Xiaotangshan, Changqing county, Shandong, dated inscription of 129 !"

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made in workshops, and interchangeability of mass-produced parts is a basic tenet not only of funerary art but of Chinese art and architecture more generally.54 The pottery towers are remarkable in that a component such as the leaf-like eave corner seen in figure 3.24 is found in many of them but never in precisely the same places or together with the same con- figuration of people, animals, doors, or windows. Mingqi may represent the individual taste of a tomb owner or his children even though they are standard features in Han burials.

Two groups of architectural mingqi probably include a greater number of features of actual buildings than many others, even though no two from these groups are identical either. The first comprise pieces that assemble as residential courtyards with domestic animals and places for them to graze or feed, wells, and outhouses. The second group are granaries (figure 3.25). Granaries such as the one shown in figure 3.25 may suggest the appearance of a Western Han granary in Duanjiacheng, Huayin, Shaanxi province. When the six-room, imperial gra- nary was uncovered about 130 kilometers from the Chang’an capital, excavators turned to mingqi to aid in the theoretical reconstruction.55 In addition to the main structure, adminis- trators’ living quarters and a guard station were enclosed inside the walled compound in Huayin. Administrative quarters and guard stations also are painted in scenes with granaries on the Helinge’er tomb walls.

Another type of small-scale, but not miniature, evidence that informs us about Han architecture is the offering shrine, a com- memorative structure where descendants came to pay homage to their ancestors. The three best examples are in Shandong. The shrine to Zhu Wei in Jinxiang is the oldest, with a dated inscrip- tion of 50 CE. Typical of shrines dedicated to family ancestors, Zhu Wei’s has three stone walls and an open front divided into a two-part entry by a central stone pillar. A cap-block at the top of the pillar imitates the lowest member of a bracket set that would interface a column-top and lintel. Columns engaged in the walls divide the other three sides as well, with a single-step bracket replicated in stone on the two side walls. The stone roof imitates one made of ceramic tiles. The interior is covered with scenes of food preparation and offering. The shrine at Xiaotangshan, dedicated to Guo Ju, is similar in structure and better preserved (figure 3.26). Measuring 3.8 meters across the front, two meters in depth, and 2.1 meters tall, its roof is known as an overhanging eaves roof (xuanshan) because it consists of a main roof ridge and gables that cover the front and back, giving

way to flat sides that come to a point at the top. The blue- painted pillars and lintel across the front were added, perhaps imitating the original structure, during repairs. Interior reliefs include food preparation, banquet scenes, horses and chariots, and performance. The shrine is dated to 129 CE by an inscription on an interior beam. The shrines to members of the Wu Family in Jiaxiang are no longer intact. Dated to the 140s, 150s, and 160s based on inscriptions on pillars and stele that have been studied at the site since the Qing dynasty, here, too, architecture is rep- resented on pieces from the shrines.56

Details of mingqi and representations of architecture in relief sculpture are sometimes so specific that one assumes that even if a feature is not found in wooden architecture until several centuries later, its presence on a mingqi indicates it would have been present in a Han building. An example is the porch-like projection known as pingzuo that may be used on any story of a structure. More is assumed about bracket sets. Que, mingqi, and relief sculpture offer ample evidence of the use of caps and blocks in multitier bracket sets projecting perpendicular and parallel to the building plane, and diagonally from a wall corner to support the undersides of overhanging eaves. The latter type is known as cantilever bracketing, the formation shown in fig- ure 2.9. Han bracket sets show the use of the cap-block (ludou), the keystone of the set, other blocks (dou), arms (gong) that join blocks, and as many as four or five layers of arms, known as tiao (steps or jumps). Bracket sets are placed above pillars, between pillars, and at corners. Han bracket sets can be divided into three types: chagong (inserted bracket-arms), in which the bracket-arms are inserted into a lintel, the eaves’ undersides, or

3.27. Most common Chinese roof types: 1. Hipped roof; 2. Hip-gable roof; 3. Hip-gable roof without chiwei (decorating ends of main ridge); 4. Overhanging eaves roof with chiwei 5. Overhanging eaves roof; 6. Pyramidal roof

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3.28. Relief sculpture on rock at Kongwangshan, Lianyungang, Jiangsu, probably second century !"

the ceiling; henggong (horizontal bracket-arms), in which brack- et-arms are on top of a beam and support another beam from its underside; and zhutou dougong (pillar-top bracket sets).57

From the small-scale evidence, we observe five roof types: si’a/e (simple hipped), xieshan (hip-gable combination), xuan- shan (overhanging gable, the type used at Xiaotangshan Shrine), yingshan (flush gable), and sijiao cuanjian (pyramidal). They are among the most common Chinese roof types for the next two millennia (figure 3.27).

The figures, birds, and animals on the roofs remain an intriguing question. Some believe they anticipate the corner decorations known as chiwei (owl’s tails), later as chiwen (open- mouthed creatures) on roofs of important buildings in later times. Others believe they are evidence that the mingqi are fanci- ful. Yet others believe the creatures, particularly birds, symbol- ize the rising of the spirit to the heavens.

China’s Earliest Buddhist Architecture

According to legend, the Eastern Han emperor Mingdi (r. 57–85) dreamed of a golden image that subsequently led him to send emissaries to Western Regions in search of its explanation: it was a Buddha. Whether or not this occurred,

Buddhists gathered, studied, and translated texts into Chinese in architectural spaces in the Eastern Han period, presumably some of them in the capital Luoyang. How Buddhism was practiced in Han China is unclear, but there is ample evidence in art and architecture that Buddhism and its symbols were present. A Buddha image is carved on the lintel above the entry to a cliff tomb at Mahao, in Leshan, Sichuan province, a facade otherwise remarkably similar to the entry to the shrine of Guo Ju (see figure 3.26). The Buddha image also is believed to appear with Confucius and Laozi at a rock-carved site known as Kongwangshan in Lianyungang, Jiangsu (figure 3.28).58

Whenever and wherever Buddhism entered China, wor- ship spaces that had originated in India had to be accommo- dated to Chinese settings. A long-standing belief has been that the que inspired a transformation from the circular relic mound with an egg-shaped dome known in South Asian con- struction by its Sanskrit name stupa into a four-sided, multi- tiered structure more compatible with Chinese timber-frame construction. It would be known in East Asia as a pagoda, a word that may have been derived from a Chinese, Persian, Sanskrit, or Portuguese name for the structure. We will read more about this process in the next two chapters. Evidence of Buddhist architecture in the Han dynasty is suggested by

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3.29. Rubbing of stupa-like image and devotees, Wu family shrine, second century !"

3.30. Brick relief with carved pagoda-like structure with lotuses on either side, found in Shifang county, Sichuan, probably late Eastern Han

relief sculpture and tomb interiors. Worshipers making obei- sance on the sides of a single-story, circular building with a domed roof in relief from the Wu family shrines and a que- like tower flanked by long-stemmed lotuses, floral symbols of the Buddha on a brick relief are important evidence of the representation of Buddhist architecture in China before the end of the Han dynasty (figures 3.29, 3.30). It is unknown whether either structure was simply a copied motif that car- ried little or no meaning; if the Buddhist symbolism of stupa and lotus were known; or if the imagery of Sichuan province developed locally, independent of outside influences. The cliff tombs at Mahao and elsewhere in Sichuan that contain relief sculpture of what appears to be Buddhist imagery are in the same regional group as those with central pillars, which, like the relief sculptures, may have been an independent structural invention in Sichuan or may have been inspired by central-pil- lar, Buddhist caves of South Asia.

Through the Han dynasty, the ideological world of China’s rulers was grounded in native Chinese beliefs, sometimes with sources in classical texts. The most important three-dimen- sional realization of an imperial order was the ruler’s central

position in the universe represented by the city Chang’an and its architecture in four directions beyond him. By the end of the Han dynasty, Buddhism entered this Chinese world order. It was to be present in cities of rulers, and there would be many of them; and unlike imperial architecture, Buddhist construc- tion would stand in remote parts of China. Han urban life in provinces like Sichuan and Shandong, where elite families built tombs and offering shrines amid a burgeoning market economy, would collapse along with the supreme position of a single capital in a unified China. Religious architecture of pious populations seeking understanding in a world with little order would be the emblem of China’s next four centuries.

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