| The black-awninged boat. |
 |
| The door-cover of Taimen. | The local features of Shaoxing dwellings not only reflect in spatial form but also in their names. Generally, a larger house is called "taimen", but a simple and common cottage or humble room can not be called so. It is said that there were 3000 taimens at old Shaoxing town, arranged in rows, showing a prosperous scene of the southern region of the lower riches of the Changjiang River. Taimen's plane distribution is as follows: along the principal axes from the entrance to extend longitudinally, there are gate, hall, main room and back hall in file; and at both sides of the axes, there are usually bed rooms, storerooms and kitchen. Patios, for interior aeration and lighting in halls and rooms, links every row of rooms. A larger taimen has five rows of rooms and even much more. Combined with Chinese building's traditional distribution - due north and south, Shaoxing dwelling's plane is like a long and narrow rectangle from north to south. For fireproof and guard against theft, a taimen's external walls are closed, especially windows in gables are rarely opened; but the inner is opened to patio, showing vitality.
The ways of traditional taimen's naming varied and approximately are four: in the light of official ranks; in the light of trades, such as "sedan shop taimen", "tinfoil paper taimen" and "pharmacy taimen"; in the light of building's features, such as "bamboo-thread taimen", "iron-plate taimen'" and "the Eight Diagrams taimen'", in the light of surnames, such as taimen of family Wang, taimen of family Zhang and taimen of family Lin, etc. Because Chinese people always kept a tradition of all members of a clan living together in a place, every taimen had recorded the rise and fall of a family and piled up innumerable historical stories. Up to day, many taimens are very incomplete and broken, their owners are unknown, but the way and flavor of life filled in those old taimens were so simple and cordial, still keeping the charm of ancient Yue culture.
The majority of Shaoxing dwellings are one or two- storied building, and the plane distribution is not strictly symmetrical along the building's axes. When a man entered into the closed patio along the narrow and cool lane, he should feel enlightened suddenly. Not limited by general rule, designers adjusted measures to local conditions and treated with building distribution intelligently: patios being large or small, long or fiat, make people find everything new and fresh when they enter by the stairs. Around the second floor of larger taimen's patio, there was generally a connected cloister; all of these compose a special open system up and down, and the residents there can talk easily between two floors.
Among taimens, there were usually narrow lanes, paved with blue flagstones. In the rainy season in April and May, lanes extended to far in continuous drizzle, which is very like a Chinese painting of misty rain. The lower part of gables at both sides of lanes, namely the dado of the external walls was made of stone for protecting the inner brick wall.
The exquisite taimens have more wood-carvings and stone carvings, which are an important manifestation of folk artisan's techniques. The woodcarving was principally used in building's accessorial components, such as door and window partition board or batter brace, with themes of lucky designs, animals and historical personalities and so on, which skill very fine and images lifelike. The majority of woodcarvings were not painted. Some of them kept the original color of wood and had turned into dark brown step by step after long time; others, such as partition boards, painted by black paint showed a charm of primitive simplicity foiled by white walls. Stone carving was usually used on door cover and ridge, generally as decorative components. Many folk houses have stone-carved lattice windows, which designs were basically linear veins, serving as a foil to their central characters or mascots, very symmetrical fine.
Some scholars point out that Shaoxing's architectural art is an art of "black, white and gray colors". In truth, when the people walk on traditional settlements of dwellings, they see white walls, black tiles, dark gray stone-bridges, dark brown partition-boards and "the culture of three black things" proper in Shaoxing (black-awning boats on the rivers, black hat on the people's head and black dried vegetable sending forth aroma in many houses) and feel a silent and elegant flavor of the south of the lower reaches of the Changjiang River. "The culture of three black things"and black, white and gray colors exerted a subtle influence on local aesthetic conception, which gradually turned implicative, wide, thick and profound; the residents' heart seems purified much, far from flippancy, not seeking fame and wealth but keeping their ideals. In full-bodied ambient of a land of rivers and lakes, fellow townsmen row boats drinking yellow wines, looking so low-pressured. It seems that any bagatelle in life has been cast to the winds.
|
