"Two rooms and one ear" means that two buildings are perpendicular to each other, and a smaller wing is connected at the vertical intersection. Of the two rooms, the house facing the west is the main room, and the side opposite to the main room is built with a tile roof cornice. The exterior walls are mostly painted in white (lime) and gray (fine mud), and the interior walls are mostly made of raised blue bricks to form colorful three-dimensional patterns or marble inlaid with natural landscape patterns. Because this wall faces east, the first ray of sunshine in the morning shines on this wall. Bai people think that this brings happiness and auspiciousness to the whole family, so people call this wall "Zhaobi" or "Fengshui Wall". Flower beds are often built at the foot of zhaobi, with flowers overflowing and quiet and elegant.
The meaning of "three rooms and one wall" is that there are three buildings in the whole courtyard, one is the main building facing west, and the other two are the annex buildings on both sides. There is also a wall opposite the main house, with a patio in the center, which just forms the layout of a quadrangle.
"Four in one and five patios" are four buildings, and there is a small wing and patio at the intersection of each building. Plus the big courtyard in the middle of the yard, it is the "five patios", which is missing one side.
In addition, the spatial layout of a house connected with two houses is called "Liuhe Tongchun", and the corridor upstairs connects all the houses, which is called "turning around". The roofs of the two architectural forms are covered with cylindrical tiles, and the front is double eaves, forming the pattern of front porch. "Bent frame" (a roof frame with a row of columns is called bent frame) bears the load, and four columns fall to the ground. The left, right and back sides are surrounded by earth walls, and the front and middle sides are separated by wooden boards. The gable reaches the top, and the part of the roof that is picked out (called "hanging mountain" in architecture) is more than the part of the gable that goes straight out of the roof (called "hard mountain" in architecture). The "hard mountain" structure can prevent the fire of neighbors from spreading. There is a kind of through wood in the "bent frame" room, under the eaves of the roof, before and after, which is called "wearing purlin" locally. It connects the "bent frame" of the whole house into a whole, and interacts with cornice cornice, cornice purlin and trestle, thus enhancing the seismic capacity of Bai folk houses.
The trend of Bai folk houses sitting west facing east is the result of their adaptation to the natural environment. First of all, the valley dam where Dali is located is formed by the broom mountain system of Hengduan Mountain from north to south. The mountains run north and south, and the houses will inevitably run east and west along the mountains and rivers. Secondly, Dali, Yunnan is a windy area, where there are not only many strong winds every year, but also strong winds, especially in Xiaguan, where the maximum wind speed can reach 12 (that is, the wind speed is about 40 meters per second). This kind of strong wind is extremely rare even in inland areas of China, so Shimonoseki is called "windy city". In the process of adapting to nature, the Bai working people have accumulated rich experience. To cope with the strong wind blowing from the west all the year round, they sit in the layout of the main room from west to east, and the doors and windows are open to the east. The wind blows from the back of the house, so it is naturally difficult to enter the room. For the wind blowing from other directions, it is solved by quadrilateral or plane combination of "three rooms and one wall". The illuminated walls of Bai buildings are relatively tall, and the main rooms, wings and halls are generally of the same height, regardless of primary and secondary, which fully play a role in blocking each other. Because from the orientation of the house, plane combination to facade treatment, it is built step by step to avoid the wind, so it is not troubled by strong winds.