From East to West and back. Chinese architecture and the beaux arts

From East to West and Back: Chinese architecture and the Beaux Arts The diaolou of Kaiping

Oriana Fenesan Key words: Chinese Architecture, Beaux-Arts, Diaolou, Kaiping, convergence of styles, western architecture, eastern architecture, transplantation of styles

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From East to West and Back: Chinese architecture and the Beaux-Arts The diaolou of Kaiping ABSTRACT

During the twentieth century, due to the movement of Chinese students to America on the basis of scholarships in the field of architecture, the traditional Chinese architecture and the French methods of the school of Beaux-Arts crossed paths in the New World. Trained as architects with a new methodology, they set to re-design the traditional upon their return home from their studies. The 1920s and 30s are marked in this sense by the students drive to practice architecture at home and to create the first architectural schools in China. Through the prism of their own world-view they thus transferred what they have learnt in the U.S., and created a style adapted to the Chinese situations.

The result is a transplantation of design mimicking as well the social, political and economic changes happening between 1911 and 1949.

After 1949 and the founding of the People’s Republic, China experienced a radically different wave of influence from the Beaux-Arts through advisors from the Soviet Union who, first under Stalin and later Khrushchev, brought Beaux-Arts ideals in the guise of socialist progress. In the early twentyfirst century, China is still feeling the effects of these events.

The paper at hand will examine the intertwining of the École des Beaux-Arts and Chinese architecture in the U.S., the ramifications it has had on Chinese architecture and how some of the methodology and paradigms have now become rooted in the field. It will also take as a case study the Diaolou in the Kaiping Villages around the mega-city of Guangzhou as a prime example of this merger of styles, as they are a by-product of a very particular history and can be directly linked to the late 19th century American Gold-Rush.

It seems fitting that the Gold-Rush inspired the merger of the two styles, when taking in consideration the Chinese five-element chart that associates gold with the yin-yang balance, center, zenith and a change of season. The convergence of the two major architectural systems posed a significant shift in architectural theory and practice in China that still reverberates to date.

“Retaining a harmonious relationship with the surrounding landscape, the Diaolou testify to the final flowering of local building traditions that started in the Ming period in response to local banditry.

Built of stone, pise, brick or concrete, these buildings represent a complex and confident fusion between Chinese and Western architectural styles”.

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INTRODUCTION Context and Background In China, sites categorized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites are commonly used as a means of economic regeneration through tourism development. This study is of a recent addition to the list, the diaolou (fortified tower houses) of Kaiping, Guangdong, in South China. This rural zone, characterized by past emigration and farming, is in the early stages of tourism development.

To the west of the Pearl River Delta, in villages nestling amid green bamboo and banana groves and surrounded by a patchwork of rice paddies, stand a number of incongruous dark towers bristling with battlements, fearsome fortresses full of arrow slits, and even the occasional elegant turret above an ornate mansion. All these buildings, in the middle of the Chinese countryside, look like faint reflections of a distant West.

“How did they end up on the banks of the Kaiping rice paddies?”1 The historical and geographical context Kaiping, along with the other neighboring xian (sub-prefectures or districts), Taishan, Xinhui and Enping, was one of the centers of Chinese emigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to south-east Asia and North America (the United States and Canada). l. In 1952, the government of the xian was installed in the township of Sanbu, and in 1993 Kaiping became a municipality (shi). There were 680,000 inhabitants in Kaiping in 2003 for an area of 1,659 square kilometers, of whom 240,000 belonged to the urban area itself (the township of Sanbu), and the others among the remaining 17 townships and 2,800 villages and hamlets.

The inhabitants of Kaiping built the diaolou in their villages during a time of chaos. Just like the medieval castles in Europe and other such fortresses, they had a defensive purpose. In 1842, following the first Opium War the Treaty of Nanking ended Guangzhou’s monopoly on trade The Diaolou of Kaiping (1842-1937) opened up five ports including Shanghai, and ceded Hong Kong to the British.

From 1851 to 1864 the Taiping rebellion set southern China ablaze, leading to the deaths of 30-40 million people. Guangdong province was ravaged from 1854 to 1856, firstly by the revolt of the Red Turbans who besieged Guangzhou at the end of July 1854, and then by the subsequent repression.

Following that, war broke out between the Punti and the Hakka peoples from 1856 to 1867. The Chinese Republic took over from the Empire in 1911, but the general situation remained precarious; between 1916 and 1926 the country was torn apart by the struggles between the warlords. In the years between the end of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the Kaiping region was very unstable. According to written local monograph accounts, between 1912 and 1930 there were

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reports of more than a hundred murders, over a thousand abductions, and 71 major robberies, in addition to the countless thefts of buffalo and other goods.

There were three major labor emigration waves in the history of Kaiping from the 1840’s to 1860’s. The overseas immigrants mainly lived in America, Southeast Asia and Australia when the Western colonists began to recruit a large number of Chinese laborers to hasten their region’s development. These Chinese workers engaged in mining, road-construction and other employment such as in restaurants and the trades. Meanwhile, exclusion and immigration acts forced the Chinese laborers back to their hometown to build homes. The Kaiping natives journeyed back and forth between China and their adoptive countries, bringing back with them not only wealth but also western culture and scientific know-how which had a significant influence on the local area. Such influence gradually developed into a unique overseas Chinese culture and lifestyle. Architecture is the very best evidence of this. In the Kaiping countryside, one will quickly notice the unique architectural styles in a variety of diaolou, ancestral halls, churches and shrines, mansions and garden villas, etc.

ARCHITECTURAL STYLE The Diaolou of Kaiping (1842-1937) Among the many buildings, diaolou architecture is the best example representing the overseas Chinese influence in Kaiping’s local culture. Behind these grand buildings are countless untold stories of the bitter struggles for survival and successes of the Kaiping natives who had gone overseas. They had endured racial prejudice, job discrimination, alienation, and family separation. The history of overseas Kaiping natives, traditional village houses, the local rice-farming cultivation, the blend of Western and Chinese building styles and the surrounded environment together form a unique cultural landscape.

Kaiping Diaolou, first appearing in the late Ming Dynasty, thrived between the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republican years. Three factors explain the functionality of diaolou and contribute to their rise: first, for the purpose of defense. The social order of Kaiping was poor and bandits were rampant. Second, for the purpose of floods. Kaiping was a valley surrounded by mountains and rivers, hence flooding was common during the monsoon seasons. Local people would build guard towers to protect themselves from both bandits and floods. Third, for the purpose of living. Most diaolou appeared during the 1910’s to 1930’s when the overseas Chinese came back to invest in their homeland; somehow diaolou and the villas were also the result of this economy. There used to be more than 3,000 diaolou in the whole region; while now only 1,833 of them survive in the 15 townships in Kaiping. The Diaolou and its associated villages are a unique, extraordinary country landscape blending Western and Chinese building techniques, styles and ways of life. Of all the diaolou villages in Kaiping, Sanmenli Village, Zili Village, Jinjiangli Village and Majianglong Village Cluster are the typical ones representing different styles of diaolou architecture, and they form a harmonious whole with the surrounding extremely beautiful and natural ambience.

Typologies

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The materials used for the construction of the diaolou play a determining role in their architectural design. Several types can be found, depending on whether they are made of stones, rammed earth, grey brick, or cement and steel. The use of stones and rammed earth is characteristic of the oldest type, even though these materials might well be used later, mainly for reasons of economy.

The use of reinforced concrete comes at a later date, since it requires cement and steel, which are imported and therefore expensive materials The stone diaolou.

These buildings are generally straightforward towers consisting of one or two storeys. The walls are about thirty centimeters thick. About ten of them are still extant in the hills north-west of Kaiping, near the Dasha Township.

The rammed earth diaolou (nilou).

This category includes buildings made of crude bricks (adobe) as well as those actually made of pounded clay or rammed earth. In building the former, sun-dried pounded earth bricks were used. The walls were often coated on the outside with a layer of chalk mixed with sand or a layer of cement, for waterproofing and weather resistance. In the latter case, the basic material was earth mixed according to a formula with fine sand, chalk, and unrefined sugar or glutinous rice, which were pounded between two large wooden planks. This kind of construction took a lot of time to complete. To make it more viscous, the earth was soaked for a long time, sometimes for up to a year, during which it had to be stirred constantly to prevent it hardening. The other ingredients were only added when it was about to be used. Walls of rammed earth measuring thirty to forty centimeters thick have a strength comparable to reinforced concrete. These diaolou usually have three storeys, but they may have up to five if they are built using solid materials, such as steel girders. There are about a hundred extant examples, mostly near the townships of Chishui and Longsheng.

The grey brick diaolou (qingzhuan lou).

Grey bricks were commonly used at the end of the Qing dynasty, and had great aesthetic appeal. The walls of the diaolou built in brick were forty to fifty centimeters thick because brick is not as strong as rammed earth but is well suited to the humid climate of the region. Some diaolou are built entirely of grey brick, while others have grey brick on the outside and rammed earth on the inside. Like the diaolou built of stones or rammed earth, the grey brick ones generally have two or three storeys, but their design is less simple. They have towers, or “swallow’s nests” (yanzi wo) jutting out sideways on their roof, and they are more ornate. Out of the 1,833 diaolou in the municipal inventory, 249 are made of grey brick. They are very numerous in the Yueshan region, north-west of Kaiping. The beams, floors, and staircases of all the above three types were usually of wood, so nearly all have suffered damage, and often only the empty walls remain.

The reinforced concrete diaolou (gangjin shuini lou).

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These are the most widespread, the most ornate, and the best preserved. Out of the 1,833 recorded by the municipality, 1,474 (80%) are made of concrete. They were built in the closing years of the Empire and under the Nationalist regime before the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945), with a major wave of building from 1920 to 1930. The construction materials were Portland Cement, sand, gravel, and steel. The walls are only forty centimeters thick but, owing to the materials used and the progress in building techniques, these diaolou are taller than the preceding three kinds, often having four or five storeys. The tallest of them, the Ruishilou has nine storeys. As in the case of the other types, the doors, window bars, and shutters are made of iron. However, the beams, floors and staircases are no longer made of wood, but of steel and concrete.

The reinforced concrete diaolou have a more complex layout. Their windows allow increased air and light, being more numerous and larger than those of the preceding type, some of which have only arrow slits as openings. Also, the window embrasures and lintels are highly decorated. The biggest change is in the upper sections of these buildings, which are overhanging and more ornate. This is a development which provides for better defense while also improving the aesthetic appearance. At the top of the building, the turrets known as “swallow’s nests” overlooking its sides, or the covered galleries running all the way round, usually have openings in the floor. These allow the defenders to be right above any potential assailants, while remaining protected from them. The material used was a determining factor in this new architectural form.

Reinforced concrete allows for the construction of unsupported extensions, cupola roofs, domes, and other rounded shapes. 20 The steel and cement, imported from the outset along with the technology for building in concrete, were brought back from abroad by the emigrants from Kaiping also changed local people’s aesthetic tastes, giving rise to a peculiar combination of Chinese and Western architectural features, such as the typical domes, Greek columns, and decorative elements like acanthus leaves. Most extant examples are made of reinforced concrete, and they date back to the end of the Empire and the early days of the Republic, because before the inhabitants of Kaiping emigrated, only a handful of rich people could build what they wanted. It was overseas emigration, coinciding historically with the invention of reinforced concrete, which made the building of the diaolou possible.

SOCIAL FACTORS Emigration as a determining factor Kaiping is one of Guangdong province’s Qiaoxiang, a place of overseas emigration, in which the money remitted from abroad is a major economic resource. According to the statistics for 1957, the Huaqiao who had returned to the country after working abroad together with their dependents amounted to over 10% of the population of Kaiping. From the end of the eighteenth century, the inhabitants of Kaiping began to migrate to other parts of China, driven by demographic pressures. By the late nineteenth century they were emigrating overseas, mainly to Southeast Asia, North America (the United States and Canada), and Australia.

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The first waves of emigration to North America were spread out between 1849 and 1880. At first the emigrants took part in the California Gold Rush, and were called jinshanke (kam-shaan hak in Cantonese, i.e. “guests of the gold mountain”). Later they took part in building the railways of North America, in the USA from 1860 to 1880, and in Canada from 1880 to 1884. At the same time, the Western powers were beginning to exploit the plantations and mines of Southeast Asia, for which they recruited mainly Chinese laborers. According to the local monographs, the first emigrants from Kaiping included people fleeing the Red Turban revolt (1854-1856), followed by Red Turbans fleeing from the subsequent repression.

Emigration was not uniformly spread throughout the territory of the xian. It mostly affected those lineages settled in the densely populated areas, like the middle and lower reaches of the Tan River, particularly the Zhang, the Xie, the Zhou, the Fang, the Guan, and the Situ. The emigrants often came from the same village—since emigration operated through family contacts—and therefore had the same surname. Once they were abroad, those that were not recruited for the railways, mines or plantations either worked in laundries or restaurants or else opened small shops or stalls. Mostly, their ambition was to return to their village after making their fortune, get married and have sons, buy some land and build a house on it, and then set up a shop in a neighboring township.

As many countries were quick to enact discriminatory anti-Chinese legislation, forbidding the arrival of fresh immigrants—preventing families from re-uniting— and denying citizenship to those already there, many emigrants opted to return home rather than remain in such a hostile environment.

When they returned home, they often enjoyed a high degree of social prestige.

WESTERN INFLUENCE One of the sources of Western aesthetic influence on the diaolou appears to have been the colonial buildings in Hong Kong, through which the emigrants had to pass on their outward and inward journeys, and more generally, those of the British Empire as a whole, from Scottish mansions to Mogul India. Other elements were picked up by the emigrants in the various countries where they worked.

There were probably some sorts of catalogue, particularly for decorative features, because certain motifs recur from one diaolou to another, such as window frame adornments. But until now, no design plan or catalogue has been discovered. All such publications seem to have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). A certain Western flavor would have been spread by them, some of which moreover were certainly sent back from abroad by the emigrants.

During the Cultural Revolution, which marked a high point in the rejection of the West, members of emigrant families were often labelled “spies”, “traitors”, and “counter-revolutionaries”.

But relations between the emigrants’ families and the Communist authorities had worsened well before then, for they were already bad in the aftermath of the Agrarian Reform of the early 1950s. So it is quite conceivable that only a handful not destroyed earlier actually remained to be destroyed under the Cultural Revolution. The reform policies and the opening up in 1979 mark a turning point. From

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then on, the authorities took a benevolent approach towards emigrants and their families, even going so far as to court their favor.

The Chinese architectural profession certainly became well-established during the period of roughly forty years, primarily through a first generation of beaux-arts-educated architect who finally had the means at their disposal to begin fostering and authentic modern Chinese architecture. Indeed, it can be argued that their beau-arts training equipped them well for this task, for the axial, symmetrical composition and hierarchical disposition of building elements that it at least superficially emphasized were also common features in classical Chinese architecture. As important, though, the habit of distinguishing the expressive “figures” of a building from its “form”, or spatial organization, helped them render architecturally the distinction between traditional “essence” and modern “use” that was so much a part of the broader cultural debate in China. Happily, the fledgling system of architectural education, by now strongly rooted in the beaux-arts tradition with the beginning of a Bauhaus influence, continued, in spite of the Japanese occupation, through the strategic merger of the faculties of Peking university, Quinghua and Nankai in Tianjin into the associated university of Chongquing, as well as the relocation there, by 1940, of Nanjing’s national central university.

The emigrants were regularly asked for economic support for their village or their lineage’s activities. Money from emigrants anxious to ensure the security of their families left back home, was used to build the diaolou. Some of these were built by a single family, providing its members with living quarters (julou). Buildings of this sort were equipped with amenities such as a kitchen and toilets.

Others were built by several families, or by all the families of a village who contributed to it (zhonglou).

In this type, each family would normally be given a small room, to store their most precious belongings and to use as a refuge in case of danger42. Finally, some diaolou were built on the joint initiative of several neighboring villages, which usually belonged to the same lineage. These served as watchtowers (genglou) and were mostly situated outside the villages, on top of a small promontory or in some other strategic location. One quarter of the 1,833 diaolou on the municipal register are buildings which were constructed by a village community, and if the watch towers are added, the number of communal buildings rises to over a third. The diaolou displayed the riches of a village, and its degree of social cohesion in the case of communally owned ones; they gave the village some prestige. By this means, villages and lineages showed their power, hoping to avoid confrontation or provocative challenges from neighbors within the overall situation of fierce rivalry over scarce resources

LINEAGE and COMMUNITY

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A very important element of these buildings was their name, written in calligraphy high up on the main façade when it was completed. As in the case of the inscriptions on the ancestral temples, whenever possible a well-known calligrapher was approached in order to confirm its prestige.

The Ruishilou, which was the highest diaolou in Kaiping, situated in the village of Jinjiangli near the township of Xiangang, was built by Huang Bixiu, a rich merchant who, together with his two sons, owned a medicine shop and a bank (qianzhuang) in Hong Kong. He wished to provide protection for his parents and wife in the village, and spent HK$30,000 on building it, in a process which took three years, from 1921 to 1923. The plans were drawn up by one of his nephews.

The calligraphy proclaiming its name on the sixth storey was a present from the abbot of the Six Banyans Temple in Guangzhou, who was a celebrated calligrapher and friend of Huang Bixiu.

Diaolou which were built by individuals, usually bore the first name or honorific title (hao) of the owner. For example, Huang Bixiu’s hao was Ruishi. The completion of the Ruishilou coincided with the 80th anniversaries of Huang’s mother and father, so he celebrated this auspicious event with a five-day banquet. The entire neighborhood was invited and even people just passing through were invited to take part.

In order to reinforce the riches and power of the village or lineage, the communally built diaolou were often named after the village, location, or lineage chief. Otherwise they might be given a title reflecting the qualities attributed to the building (for example: ju’anlou, or tranquil dwelling). By tradition, once a diaolou was completed, its name was either sculpted out of lime, or moulded out of lime and then attached. Alongside the characters there were usually a number of motifs to bring good luck. There are very few diaolou without a name.

CONCLUSION The distinction between East and West is similarly less useful to the present discussion than it might have been during the early days of the treaty ports in China, or at the onset of the selfstrengthening movement around 1860. For one thing, the sheer contrast between the beliefs and practices of one sphere and the other is less marked than it once was, and it now manifests itself differently.

The postcolonial new world of the western hemisphere also exhibits substantially different rates and degrees of modernization from one nation to the next, and even within those selfsame nations.

Perhaps a better way to describe its position is to consider the effects of a rather sudden or sharp encounter with newness produced by both internal institutional changes and external influences, often clearly visible in China’s architecture- an encounter leading to the emulation of modern practices.

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China has emulated others in substantial technological borrowing, again incorporating change relatively rapidly- with obvious architectural results, as well as a much broader sociocultural aspect.

Bibliography:

Zhang, Guoxiong. Diaolou and Folk Dwellings in Kaiping. S.l.: Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House, 2002.

Xue, Charlie Q. L. Building a Revolution: Chinese Architecture since 1980. Hong Kong University Press, HKU, 2006.

Cody, Jeffrey W., Nancy Shatzman. Steinhardt, and Tony Atkin. Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-arts: Edited by Jeffrey W. Cody, Nancy S. Steinhardt, and Tony Atkin. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2011.

Rowe, Peter G., and Seng Kuan. Architectural Encounters with Essence and Form in Modern China.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. “Protection and Management Plan on Kaiping Diaolou and Villages� (Extracts), Urban Planning and Design Center of Peking University, Dec. 2001

Web

Oriana Fenesan Politecnico Di Milano "Kaiping Diaolou and Villages." - UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Accessed May 3, 2016. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1112.

Tan, Jinhua, and Selia. "Kaiping Diaolou and Its Associated Villages: Documenting the Process of Application to the World Heritage List." 2007. Accessed May 29, 2016. http://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/56043.

"China Perspectives." The Diaolou of Kaiping (1842-1937). Accessed May 10, 2016. http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/1033.

Chinese Architectural Development in the Early 20th Century. Accessed May 10, 2016. http://www1.chinaculture.org/library/2008-01/16/content_39014.htm.

Table of figures Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure Figure

1.View of Jinjiangli Village ........................................................................................ 11 2.Kaiping Diaolou, fortified towers in Guangdong, China .............................................. 12 3. Towers of Kaiping in the paddies ........................................................................... 13 4. State of decay of Kaiping Diaolou .......................................................................... 13 5. Rice paddies around Kaiping ................................................................................. 14 6. Distribution of the Diaolou .................................................................................... 15

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Figure 1.View of Jinjiangli Village

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Figure 2.Kaiping Diaolou, fortified towers in Guangdong, China

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Figure 3. Towers of Kaiping in the paddies

Figure 4. State of decay of Kaiping Diaolou

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Figure 5. Rice paddies around Kaiping

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Figure 6. Distribution of the Diaolou