The outer surface of the Liao Family wood building.

The suspending pillars and protruding beams of the Gaulan wood building.

    The ganlan houses made of bamboo or wood frame had been gradually perfected by the ancestors. People lived on the second floor while the first floor without walls was mainly used for storage of miscellaneous things or served as pigsties or sheepfolds.

    The ganlan wood houses are usually based upon a rectangular plane of "three rooms with tour trusses". (The building of three rooms with four trusses is China's traditional architecture having three rooms in facade while there are four lines of rafter on the roof truss)

    In line with different conditions such as family population, topography of building foundation and its relationship with roads, the building planes in the shape of "L",  moreover, the buildings are usually constructed on the slopes of mountain, therefore, two-storeyed or three-storeyed rectangular units are more popular in order to economize the land. The rectangle plane often contains staggered floor or skip-floor. The wood houses in the Dong Autonomous County of Sanjiang are mainly topped with four-sloped roofs but those of the Miao village in the Miao Autonomous County of Rongshui are topped with two-sloped roofs. The main materials of roofs are grey tiles, while the wood houses in wooded mountains may use the shingles. The protection walls with small windows are also constructed with planks. The bay of a small wood house in the northern part of Guangxi ranges from three to five meters, which mainly depends on the size of the China firs. The whole wood building is connected with mortise and tenon but not the iron articles.

    At the bottom the wood columns are usually placed on the building foundation while putting stone blocks under the columns. The wood system bears the force as a whole, therefore even if one column was destroyed or the stone-block under a column was moved away the monolithic wood house won't move an inch. The advantages of such a construction are as follows: In the mountain areas it is difficult to find the flat foundations for construction; readjustment of length of wood column tallying with the height of ground level could free from the limitation of the height of building foundation. In line with necessities, the peripheral wood wall bodies for protection may be totally closed: or closed with small windows; or opened with balcony railing. The extension or connection of the wood houses would be more convenient. Such a construction is also beneficial to discharge rainfalls and resist earthquakes.

   It is worthy of noting that the ganlan wood houses in the northern part of Guangxi are characterized by two peculiar elements: hanging pillar and overhanging eaves. In order to increase the floorage of a wood house on the limited land, the stretching-out technology is used on every floor; which requires the brackets on the transverse beams to carry the load of the upper stretching- out pillars, forming a through-jointed frame through the way of mortise and tenon. The ends of the pillars extend, forming the hanging pillars.

   The head of the hanging pillar has always been polished and carved to form the shape of lotus or lanterns, which are similar to the festoon decoration on the door of the courtyard and house in Beijing. Popular use of cantilever beams under the eaves is mainly for the rainy and hot climate in south China. Therefore, the wood house often has long plancier pieces which can be as long as 1.5 meters. The vertical props under the eaves are outriggers with purloins. The larger plancier pieces always have two or three layers of outrigger. Although the total wood house is not carved with exquisite sculpture, its modeling is light and graceful through well arrangement of through-jointed frame, hanging posts, balconies, cantilever beams together with stagger floor and overlap joints.