Culture: Identity, Beliefs, and Day-to-Day Life of a Social Group - Essay Sample

Introduction

Culture is a very important facet of society and helps identify people within a particular social group. Culture is attributed to many aspects of daily life that reflect this identity held by a group of people. Such aspects include clothing, architecture, beliefs as well as normal day-to-day routine activities shared between people. These activities and artifacts help to further bind together the people who share them as well as cementing the values of the said culture among themselves. Architecture, in this case, becomes of particular importance as it is the expression of the views, beliefs and values of a particular culture in artistic and functional means that can be utilized not only by the cultural group in question but also the collective population that gets to interact with and within the structures erected. As such, architecture is a means for expression for the entire cultural group as opposed to just one member of the group who designed or constructed the building (Rapoport & el Sayegh, 2005). Chinese architecture is of especial interest due to its unique style and form; inspired by centuries of philosophical, psychological, religious and even political notions and ideas that have formed part of the Chinese culture over the ages (Deqi & Dehua, 2004).

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Chinese architecture is, as aforementioned, unique, compared to that in other cultures. This is as a result of heavy philosophical influences by Chinese philosophical doctrines that have continued to remain a key influencing factor for centuries; even in this modern age. The style and design of the structures also represents heavy religious influences as shall be discussed forthwith.

In traditional china, buildings were constructed mainly out of wood as the most readily available material (Fang et al., 2001). Majority of homes and settlements were thus built by wood and roofed with glazed ceramic tiles. Government offices, temples and other landmark shrines were built atop a raised place with wood, brick or stone. There was minimal use of nails due to the inflexibility of nailed joints during earthquakes and instead, the joints were interlocked wherever possible using mortices and tenons to provide required flexibility. the pagoda, influenced heavily by Indian Buddhist temples, became one of the most important symbols of Chinese architecture as the Chinese added upon the original Indian 'stupa' to create a grandiose multistoried complex with eccentric shapes; up to twelve stories in some places. The pagoda is a many storied building constructed around a central column for support and featuring a variety of roofing styles from straight inclined roofs to the sweeping roof, raised at the corners, that is characteristic of imagery depicting Chinese architecture. This combination is seen in a number of sites such as the Wuhan bell tower and even the Song dynasty's Liaodi pagoda (Crouch & Johnson, 2001).

Domestic buildings, on the other hand, reflect mainly the socioeconomic state of a majority of the Chinese people. Walls were made of roughly hewn stones or bricks, but dried mud and wood formed the main building materials. Rooves were mainly thatched with locally available straws or reeds supported by wood. Additionally, the practice of incorporating subterranean level basements in these domestic structures has been evidenced to date as far back as five thousand years before Christ's existence (Hsi-nien, et al., 2002). The houses were mostly raised on stilts especially along the lower Yangtze; an area prone to occasional flooding. During the Han dynasty, use of interlocking roofing tiles became widespread in domestic construction.

Traditional Chinese architecture aims to create a harmony between the person and the environment they live in. This is a feature of the idea of fengshui; an idea which aims to harmonize an individual with their immediate surrounding by balancing the energy forces between them (Abrams, 1989). Feng Shui has become increasingly popular in the modern age as it reflects simplistic and pragmatic common-sense ways to keep a home clean, clear and effectively organized. In traditional china, however, the philosophy was used over the century to organize sites, shrines and landmarks in a manner that causes each feature to become auspicious within its environment. By studying correlations between humans and their surroundings, the ancient Chinese were able to understand particular relationships between humans and the natural world (Zhu, 2013). This was done though studying astrology, local geography, botany as well as cosmology in order to align people with the stars, the land around them and even the plants that grow there. Fengshui is characterized by the organization of spaces to minimize clutter and create a graceful and efficient energy flow within the home so as to create the harmony between a person and the environment.

Fengshui is not just employed in the interior of homes but also the exterior compounds as well as in urban planning. Gardens in china are designed with asymmetry in a symbolic reference to the balance of man and nature as one; a doctrine in traditional China. This asymmetry in the gardens creates a flow of energy that helps build this harmony as opposed to the bilateral symmetry used in the development of structures. Structures are symmetrical because they are artificial constructs that are meant to fit in with the environment beautifully and harmoniously while gardens are natural components of the environment that are meant to form one natural entity together with the people; hence the asymmetry, whose harmonious balance is only attained with the humans (Miteva, Sandeva & Despot, 2019). Gardens are also decorated with small mounds of hill stones which represent the symbolic idea of a mountain as the yang and a pursuit for immortality. A fountain of water among the stones is then used to symbolize the dynamically beautiful yin in symbolic reference to existential emptiness (Azuma, 2016). This balance between the yin and yang creates the harmonious appearance and feel of Chinese exterior compound design as the primary tenet and aim of fengshui.

Chinese urban planning is a very important facet of the Chinese cultural dynamic and the Chinese have been known to take planning of urban spaces with utmost severity. The locations of buildings were carefully picked out with reference to the immediate vicinity of the said location. Most buildings belonging to the royal or administrative designation were aligned on a north to south orientation, with connected buildings aligned one after the other; connected axially and joined by intervening squares. Less important buildings were constructed along the sides of a main building in symmetric alignment with wings on each side. In such organizations, the architecture was used to distinguish between political and social hierarchies within Chinese culture and society. Imperial palaces were designed with courtyards intervening between each successive crossing on the journey inwards; with each crossing limiting access in a greater way than the previous. As such, power meant being able to proceed ever inward to the innermost sanctum of such buildings.Occasional invasions by nomadic steppe tribes living in the area north of china prompted the construction of what is easily the greatest achievement of Chinese architecture; the Great Wall of China. Stretching from Gansu province to Liaodong peninsula, the wall spans over five thousand kilometers with few breaks in between. Square towers span the wall at intervals and movement between the towers along the wall is made possible by walkways on the wall itself, serving as a transport and communication channel for Chinese soldiers during invasions in ancient china (Chen et. Al., 2017).Chinese architecture has had influencing traces from other Buddhist nations such as India and Tibet, and these have been seen to spread over to other Asian nations such as Korea and Japan. However, geographical differences as well as differences in climate have created variations between architecture in the Asian states. While china has been extensively using brick and stone for a long time to build, Korea has been known to employ wood as a primary construction ingredient owing to its mountainous geography and the widespread availability of timber in the region. Japan, on the other hand, also uses wood primarily, but its location along earthquake regions sees that the Japanese focus on building structures that withstand earthquakes better (Coaldrake, 1996). Additionally, while Chinese civilian architecture is less diverse due to the centralization of most ethnic groups, Japanese architecture exhibits a more diverse scape as many of the ethnic groups retained their independence during the premodern era.

Conclusion

Culture is often mirrored in the practices of a people, the clothing they wear as well as the buildings they build around them. This is especially true for China; whose unique architecture is almost synonymous with their culture. Characterized by tall wooden and stone structures modelled in eccentric yet graceful shapes, the architecture typifies the heavy philosophical, ideological as well as economical influences that shape it. From using Indian-inspired pagodas to the planning of cities, private compounds as well as building interiors with the philosophical principles of Chinese geomancy. Chinese architecture exemplifies the culture upon which it is situated. These influences have spread over to neighboring countries and features such as fengshui continue to influence architecture in the western world to this day.

References

Abrams, E. M. (1989). Architecture and energy: An evolutionary perspective. Archaeological method and theory, 1, 47-87.

Azuma, M. (2016). YIN YU TANG AND THE EFFECTS OF RE-CONTEXTUALIZATION ON VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE (Doctoral dissertation, The University of Utah).

Chen, W., Du, Y., Cui, K., Fu, X., & Gong, S. (2017). Architectural forms and distribution characteristics of beacon towers of the Ming Great Wall in Qinghai Province. Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering, 16(3), 503-510.

Coaldrake, W. H. (1996). Architecture and authority in Japan. Psychology Press.

Crouch, D. P., & Johnson, J. G. (2001). Traditions in architecture.

Deqi, S., & Dehua, W. (2004). de l'article/du chapitre Chinese vernacular dwelling. distributeur China Intercontinental Press.

Fang, D. P., Iwasaki, S., Yu, M. H., Shen, Q. P., Miyamoto, Y., & Hikosaka, H. (2001). Ancient Chinese timber architecture. I: Experimental study. Journal of Structural Engineering, 127(11), 1348-1357.

Hsi-nien, F., Fu, X., Guo, D., Liu, X., Pan, G., Qiao, Y., & Sun, D. (2002). Chinese architecture. Yale University Press.

Miteva, P., Sandeva, V., & Despot, K. (2019). Feng-shui and landscaping.

Rapoport, A., & el Sayegh, S. (2005). Culture, architecture, and design (p. 92). Washington: Locke science publishing Company.

Zhu, J. (2013). Architecture of Modern China: A historical critique. Routledge.