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Quanzhou residential houses

2013-01-22 14:05:55

 

Quanzhou residential houses are ancient residential architectures in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province. They are of diversified types including earth building, wooden building, stone house and official-type mansion, most of which are preserved in Ancient Quanzhou Town. Quanzhou is endowed with profound cultural context since it was the most prosperous region in the southern part of Fujian Province since ancient times and used to be the largest oriental port. Quanzhou residential houses are provided with traditional Chinese architectural concepts and styles while assimilating a variety of religions and exotic cultures, thus presenting a peculiar style.

Grand, elegant and dignified official-type mansion is the typical representative of Quanzhou residential houses. It is built in line with the architectural style of imperial palaces, namely, symmetrical array along the axis line, multi-layer in vertical direction, and odd number of houses. Furthermore, all houses are connected in all directions to form an enclosed space; the internal floor is paved with red square bricks; doors and windows are carved with patterns of flowers, birds, landscape, human beings, etc.; the external floor is paved with level-off block stones; the external walls are built with grayish-white stones and decorated with various auspicious patterns assembled by red bricks, which are of west Asian and Arabian styles. Most of the roofs are high warped coattail ridges decorated with dual undulate patterns for the purpose of aesthetic appearance and typhoon resistance. Existing official-type mansions include Cai Zishen ancient residential house group in Guanqiao Town, Nan'an City and Yang Amiao's former residence in Jinjiang City.

Various woodcarving, colored painting, stone inscription and openwork carving can be seen everywhere in Quanzhou residential houses, each of which presents as a palace of craftworks. These residential houses can, while embodying all-embracing and diversified architectural culture of the southern part of Fujian Province, reflect historical and cultural context as well as elegant taste of Quanzhou people.




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