Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia. Ronald G. Knapp
was used as flooring. After crossing the raised granite threshold, a visitor will note that the middle bay, including the full tianjing, is covered completely with granite dimension stone. Along the sides, granite slabs were used only to frame areas that were covered with kiln-fired red tile flooring. As the view from the entry hall through the tianjing to the main hall reveals, the tianjing was sunken, with drains to lead rainwater out of the home. Just beyond the tianjing and in front of the main hall, the level of the flooring was elevated to express the hierarchical importance of the hall.
Set upon carved granite bases, square granite columns with auspicious couplets carved into them, were placed around the tianjing. Atop each of these stone columns was fitted a short wooden column, linked together by mortise-and-tenon joinery, to lift the wooden framework supporting the roof. The horizontal and vertical wooden members as well as the elaborate wooden bracket sets still comprise an important ornamental aspect of the house that complements the hard stone beneath the feet. No room was designed to have more richness than the main hall, which was surrounded with solid wooden walls and sturdy hardwood columns. Sadly and tragically in recent years, the ridge beam that supported the roof rotted and fell to the floor, bringing down with it the wooden purlins, rafters, and roof tiles, and leaving the room open to the elements. What once must have been an imposing family altar with ancestral tablets atop it, has been replaced by a low table with a small collection of old photographs and votive pieces with a triple mirror above.
Throughout this region of Fujian, the exterior walls of many dwellings are constructed of either slabs of cut granite or composed only of red bricks, hongzhuan, made of local lateritic soils and fired in nearby kilns. The ancestral home of Tan Tek Ke, on the other hand, was constructed using both granite and red brick as structural and ornamental building materials. From a distance, the red brick of the façade and sidewalls appears to be laid with common bonds, yet on closer inspection it is clear that all of the red brick in the façade was used to serve ornamental purposes, with a number of different motifs. Adjacent to the entryway, the thin red bricks were decorated with a zigzag pattern of dark lines, which appear to have been painted on the bricks before they were fired. Surrounding each of the four granite windows are thin red bricks in a modified herringbone pattern with a box bond. Unlike Western bricklaying patterns, where stretchers vary to create named bonds, this Chinese pattern utilizes the wider top or face of the brick and the narrow header, which is darkened, to create the pattern. Carved bricks and tiles in geometric and floral patterns were also arrayed as a frame around the block of herringbone patterned bricks. Carved human figures were inset in five locations on each of two walls, but most are still obscured by a coating of white plaster. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, these carvings were plastered over as a precaution in order to prevent their destruction, but only several have been restored.
Granite, a widely available building material in the Quanzhou area, is used not only for flooring but also for columns and the bases of columns and is carved into ornamental panels.
Seven slender granite slabs are employed here to create one of the windows along the front wall, which is covered with thin red bricks.
Although the residence is generally in good condition, one area of serious damage resulted from the collapse of the main beam supporting the roof above the ancestral hall, which then opened the area to chronic water damage.
Along each side of the skywell, the eaves are supported by an assemblage of timbers, some of which are elaborately carved.
The gaze of a visitor approaching a residence of this type is drawn to the upswept ridgeline above the entry hall at the center of the complex, which is matched by a more impressive, and slightly higher, one on the main hall behind. This type of graceful ridgeline is called the yanwei or “swallowtail” style partly because it is upswept and tapered, but mainly because it is deeply forked at its tip. Each of the adjacent perpendicular buildings was constructed with a lower upswept ridgeline, with shed roofs that framed the sides of the central tianjing. These created a pair of flat rooftop terraces, which were accessible from below using stairs, outdoor spaces that once provided a place for quietude to enjoy the breeze in the evening or the moon at night. The relatively gentle pitch of the roofs was governed by the spacing ratio between the beams and struts that supported the roof purlins. Arcuate roof tiles, which appear like sections of bamboo, were used to cover the roofs. Today, the roof of one of the outer wing structures is undergoing renovation and currently only has a tar paper surface, which is held in place by bricks. What once was its symmetrical double on the other end of the house has been altered significantly with the removal of the original second floor and its replacement by a “modern” higher structure with a flat roof.
Traditional residences such as this have significantly declined in number over the past half-century, not only because of the disinterest of descendants and lack of maintenance but also because of deterioration due to age, dilapidation, and abuse. After 1949, especially during the class struggles associated with Land Reform, both land and housing were confiscated from landlords and merchants before they were redistributed to poor peasants. As a result, many grand residences, which represented the patrimony of Chinese living abroad, came to be occupied by destitute local families whose interest was more in shelter than preservation. While the 1950 Land Reform Law stated that ancestral shrines, temples, and landlords’ residences “should not be damaged,” and together with the “surplus houses of landlords... not suitable for the use of peasants” be transformed into facilities for “public use” by local governments, most began a process of corrosive decline that was accelerated during the transition to communes, which began in 1958. During this period, in which there was a craze for collectivized living, stately structures representative of China’s glorious architectural traditions—residences, ancestral halls, and temples—were transformed into dining halls, workshops, administrative headquarters, and dormitories, among other group-centered uses for the masses (Knapp and Shen, 1992: 47–55). Moreover, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution a decade later, there was frenzied activity throughout the country that brought about the smashing and burning of ancestral altars and tablets, including substantial amounts of applied ornamentation handed down from the past. Ornamental and ritual elements made of wood, clay, and porcelain suffered the greatest loss, while those made of stone and brick managed to survive in significant numbers.
During what is known as the Reform and Opening-up Period in the decade after 1979, Overseas Chinese as well as local families, whose property in China had been confiscated during “the high tide of socialism” after 1949, were invited to apply for its return. Descendants from all over the world, including Southeast Asia, some of them generations removed from those who built the old homes, traveled to China in search of their family legacy. Families thus were able to assess what had been lost and what remained, while contemplating what to do with the property they once thought had been lost. Many stately old residences were quickly cleared of non-family members who occupied them, were cleaned of grime, and were repaired. In some cases, where furnishings had been removed and stored, they were returned, but in most cases furniture was not recoverable. Some families were able to reclaim their material links to their past, passing the structures on to family members still living in China. In other instances, overseas families provided funds for the restoration of a grand home with the title transferred to a governmental body or organization that promised to open the home as an historic site. The Chen Cihong manor shown on pages 262–7 is an example of this type of effort.
When the ancestral home of Tan Tek Kee was fully returned to the family, it had been stripped of all of its furniture and had suffered badly from lack of maintenance. The ritual heart of the residence in the main hall was derelict, with all of the tangible material elements long gone, and only faded memories remain. What once had been exquisite compositions of fine furnishings, ritual paraphernalia, paintings, and other art works, all had