The traditional residences of the Hakka people
They are mainly distributed in eastern Guangdong, northern Guangdong, the Dongjiang River Basin and Shenzhen, Hong Kong and other places surrounding the Pearl River Estuary. They are rich in connotation and colorful in form. , is a precious historical and cultural heritage. Hakka enclosed houses in Guangdong and Hong Kong can be roughly divided into 15 types, among which the dragon-style enclosed houses, castle-style enclosed buildings and four-corner buildings are the most distinctive.
1. Square Enclosed Buildings
There are many forms of square enclosed buildings, such as Fujian-Western square earth buildings and square watchtowers in northern Guangdong, etc. Square enclosures are divided into square and rectangular shapes. "Fujian-style square earth building" refers to a rammed earth building that is surrounded by several-story rammed earth walls. Most of the floors inside are wooden structures. A rectangular inner courtyard is formed in the center. It is closed to the outside and It is open to the inside and has a huge appearance, like a solid earth castle. This kind of square enclosed building is scattered sporadically in Raoping, Jiaoling, Dabu and Fengshun of Guangdong, which are adjacent to western Fujian.
2. The circular enclosure
The circular enclosure is like "a flying saucer falling from the sky and a mushroom emerging from the ground." It is truly a work of art. This kind of ring-shaped earth building is also called "Zhai" by some people. With its circular layout and tall and majestic momentum, it can be called a residential wonder in the world. There are two types of internal structures of circular earth buildings: corridor type and unit type. The diameter of earth buildings ranges from tens to hundreds of meters. Round earth buildings, like square earth buildings, are distributed in Dabu, Raoping, Jiaoling and Fengshun in eastern Guangdong, which are adjacent to western Fujian. The structures of the buildings in earth buildings are mostly unit housing.
The circular enclosure is like "a flying saucer falling from the sky and a mushroom emerging from the ground." It is truly a miraculous workmanship. This kind of ring-shaped earth building is also called "Zhai" by some people. With its circular layout and tall and majestic momentum, it can be called a residential wonder in the world. There are two types of internal structures of circular earth buildings: corridor type and unit type. The diameter of earth buildings ranges from tens to hundreds of meters. Round earth buildings, like square earth buildings, are distributed in Dabu, Raoping, Jiaoling and Fengshun in eastern Guangdong, which are adjacent to western Fujian. The structures of the buildings in earth buildings are mostly unit housing.
3. Half-moon-shaped enclosures
Half-moon-shaped enclosures are mainly distributed in Dabu and Raoping areas of Guangdong Province at the border with western Fujian. The number of Raoyang, Shangrao and Shangshan in Raoping is the largest, followed by Taoyuan in Dabu, and there are also scattered ones in the eastern part of Meixian County. The shape of the half-moon-shaped enclosure is similar to the rear enclosure of the dragon-style enclosure in Xingning and Meixian areas. Some are overlapped with two or three half-moons, and are two stories high. The first floor is a unit housing, and the enclosure is surrounded by There are lanes ranging from a few meters to more than ten meters wide. Most of the half-moon-shaped enclosed buildings in eastern Guangdong have single enclosures. In the middle of the half-moon-shaped inner ring square, there is a two- or three-chamber ancestral temple, and as usual there is a heping and a pond in front. There is also an open half-moon-shaped enclosure in the ring, and the open space is used as a space for drying things and holding activities.
4. Oval-shaped enclosure
According to the survey of Mr. Huang Chongyue and Yang Yaolin of the Shenzhen Museum, six oval-shaped Hakka enclosures were found. The Taihua Building in Raoyang Lanshe Village, Raoping, has some changes in appearance compared with the round earth building with a "Western Fujian" corridor room structure. Although the Zhongshan Temple of the Shi Family in Huangpi, Xingning, the Hengfeng Building of the Liu Family in Luogang, and the Zhongxian Palace of the Huang Family in Dabu Huliao are oval in shape (the Zhongshan Temple is "crab-shaped"), their materials and architectural structures are similar to There is a big difference between the "Western Fujian style" round earth buildings, and the layout is relatively close to that of the Weilong-style enclosed house.
5. Octagonal enclosure
The octagonal enclosure is a complex of square and round earth buildings. Its construction method, materials and structure are closest to those of round earth buildings. And its construction is much more difficult. Compared with square and round earth buildings in terms of living area, comfort and convenience, this multi-angular building has no obvious advantages. This may be related to Feng Shui. Only two octagonal earth buildings have been found in Raoping, Guangdong. Among them, the residents of the Huang family in Daoyunlou, Nanlian Village, Sanrao, speak Chaoshan dialect, but they identify their ancestors as Hakka.
6. Weilong-style enclosed houses
The distribution of Weilong-style enclosed houses is centered on Xingning and Meixian, the hinterland of Hakka settlements, and radiates to the surrounding areas, spreading to the Dongjiang River Basin and surrounding areas. Shenzhen area at the Pearl River Estuary.
The Weilong-style enclosed house is the most numerous and grand-scale residential building among the Hakka houses in Guangdong. It integrates traditional etiquette, ethical concepts, yin and yang and the five elements, Feng Shui geography, philosophical thought, and architectural art.
The main body of the Weilong-style enclosed house is the main room. The so-called hall, that is, the central axis building is a square hall, with at least two halls and usually three halls. The halls are separated by patios. The upper hall is the ancestral hall, the middle hall is the meeting hall, and the lower hall is small in depth and rectangular. , for the foyer. There are ancestral halls on both sides of the main hall, usually separated by lanes into the bright room, the secondary room, the tip room and the end room. There are horizontal houses on both sides of the main hall, and a half-moon-shaped enclosure is built at the back to connect the horizontal houses, with a flower head inside the half-moon shape. There are two horizontal and one surrounding dragons, four horizontal and two surrounding dragons... The largest one is the ten horizontal and five surrounding dragons. Most of the Weilong-style enclosed houses are built against the mountains, with the front low and the back high, protruding from the central axis of the main hall, making it a spectacular sight. In front of the door is Heping, with a low wall and a half-moon-shaped pond in front. The overall shape of the dragon-style enclosure is round, like the Tai Chi diagram of yin and yang, which embodies the meaning of a round sky and a round place.
There are some dragon-style enclosed houses. For the purpose of defense, watchtowers are built in front and behind the outer horizontal house. The watchtowers are often one floor higher than the main house, so they are also called "four-cornered buildings" or houses with four watchtowers. Dragon style enclosure. The number of enclosures for a dragon-style enclosed house depends on factors such as the family's development status and terrain location. Generally, there is only one enclosure when it is first built, and it will continue to increase later.
7. Four-corner towers and other corner towers
The four-corner towers distributed in northeastern Guangdong have an origin and inheritance relationship with the "Western Fujian-style" square earth buildings and the "Tuweizi" in southern Jiangxi. Highlight its defensive function.
The main feature of the Sijiaolou is that it is a square (more accurately speaking, rectangular) watchtower built around the four corners of the house. The appearance and internal structure of the four-corner building are varied, and eastern Guangdong and northern Guangdong have their own characteristics.
The central axis of the four-cornered building in eastern Guangdong is generally the main hall, mostly with three halls. The left and right horizontal houses are connected with the outer walls of the upper hall to form an enclosure. The four corners are built one to two stories higher than the horizontal houses and the main hall, that is, two to three-story watchtowers. , the watchtower protrudes from the eaves wall by more than one meter. There are three doors on the front, the middle (main room) is the main door (main entrance), and the horizontal rooms on the left and right sides are small doors (side doors). The layout in front of the door is the same as that of the dragon-style enclosed house. As usual, there is a grass flat, a front guard wall, and a half-moon-shaped pond. "Zhuandoumen" are built at both ends of Heping to enter and exit. Some four-corner buildings do not have a main room in the middle, forming a large space surrounded by bars and houses. This layout is conducive to defense, such as the "hiding world wall" on the back of Xingning Gang. According to local legend, whenever there is a war or banditry, residents of nearby villages will Move into this building to avoid being entrenched.
The four-corner towers in northern Guangdong and Heyuan are more varied. In addition to the watchtower roofs being decorated in various pot-ear shapes, some have two, four, six or eight watchtowers and a watchtower.
8. Hall-horizontal enclosed house
The basic structure of the hall-horizontal enclosed house is two halls (halls) or three halls on the central axis, and the maximum is five halls. Add horizontal houses on both sides. This traditional house style is called "Fudi style" by Hakka people in eastern Guangdong and "Five Phoenix House" in Fujian. This type of residence has strong adaptability to the terrain and is more suitable for the customs and lifestyle of people living together as a group and multiple generations living under the same roof. Therefore, they are widely distributed in large numbers. The main difference between it and the dragon-style enclosed house is that there are no flower heads and dragons at the back, which highlights the plane structure and characteristics of Hakka houses: maintaining the characteristics of the courtyard and hall-style structural combination in the Central Plains area, that is, the hall, patio, sky street, and heping , pond and other supporting facilities are integrated into one, which is both complete and practical.
The characteristic of the hall-horizontal enclosed house is that the open hall, corridor and patio on the central axis form a trinity of hall and well space, with balanced and symmetrical wing rooms on the left and right. Whether it is the central axis or the horizontal room, They all use "four shelves and three rooms" as the basic composition, with an even number of horizontal rooms. The shape of the entire building is low in front and high in back, highlighting the central axis. The main room is high and the horizontal rooms are low. Because the overall structure is high and orderly, the roof tiles are scattered layer by layer, forming a stack of tiles, usually five stacks. The tile roofs and eaves of each layer are like five phoenixes spreading their wings, so some people call it the "Five Phoenix Tower". .
9. Gang-style Enclosure
The Gang-style Enclosure is a relatively simple type of Hakka residence. Because it is arranged longitudinally with the mountain flowers facing forward, it is called the Gang-style Enclosure. , and got its name because the vertical horizontal houses resemble the levers on both sides of the sedan chair. The pole-type enclosure has at least two poles and as many as eight poles.
In the bar-type enclosure, the main hall is sandwiched between the bars, which obviously exaggerates the "gang", reduces the "hall", and raises the height of the "gang". But in terms of floor plan, the hall still plays a role in determining the orientation, and it must face the main door.
The construction principles of the pole-type enclosure and the dragon-style enclosure are different. In the Weilong-style enclosed house, the main room is built first, and then the horizontal houses and the surrounding dragon are built. As the family grows, it continues to expand outwards. The construction principle of the pole house is to first build the simplest and practical pole house according to economic conditions, and then leave space to build the ancestral hall after economic conditions permit. Another factor is the influence and restriction of Feng Shui geography. Feng Shui masters built house styles based on the calculation of Yin Yang and Five Elements. For example, the "Ox Corner House" of Qiu's Doctor's House in Baibai County, Meixian County was originally a six-bar house. According to the mountain shape, it was added at the end of the side bar house. The dragon was only half-encircled, but circular wells were dug on both sides of the back eave wall of the hall to symbolize the bull's eye, thus forming a "cow-horned house". Bar-type fences are mostly distributed in Meixian and Dabu in eastern Guangdong, and are also scattered in other areas. Most of the bar-type fences in Hong Kong have changes in form and are small and exquisite.
10. Castle-style enclosure
Castle-style enclosure, with the outer walls made of rammed "sanhe earth" or green bricks, is a typical Hakka residence in the Dongjiang River Basin, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The main feature is that it is a complex of hall-shaped enclosed houses, dragon-enclosed houses and four-corner buildings, and was developed by absorbing the advantages of Guangfu folk houses. The layout retains the main structures of Xingmei Hakka residences such as main hall, horizontal house, heping, moon pool and rotating door, surrounded by two-story enclosures. In some enclosures, on the basis of retaining the four-corner towers, a "watchtower" is added in the center of the rear enclosure. The watchtower is the highest point of the entire building. A corridor "Zou Ma Lou" is built around the top floor of the enclosure building.
The exterior decoration of the enclosed building has two major features: first, a parapet is built on the surrounding eaves, and the eaves are made of blue bricks with several layers of water chestnut teeth; second, there are mostly mountain flowers on both sides of the top of the watchtower and watchtower. It is made into a "pot ear" shape and decorated with picks. The architectural form of the internal structure has changed greatly. Surrounding the building (the front row is called the inverted seat) are two- or three-story unit houses, which are low inside and high outside. They usually have one living room, two rooms, a patio, and a second corridor. . The main room and side room are mostly two-story unit rooms. The main entrance building occupies one unit. After entering the gate and passing through the foyer, there is a sky street. The sky street separates the surrounding building from the main room and the horizontal room. Some gates are built with imitation arch-style buildings, with gray sculpture patterns and stone carvings.
11. Encircling a Village
Enclosing a village means surrounding a village with enclosed buildings or walls, so some people call it a "village". The village is surrounded by deep ditches and high fortifications, which are impregnable and impregnable, obviously for the purpose of defense. The distribution of Hakka villages is mainly at the critical point or mixed place between Hakka people and Chaoshan people or Cantonese people. There are many examples in northern Guangdong, Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
The Hakka walled villages in Shenzhen are influenced by the walled villages of Guangfu and retain the tradition of Hakka dwellings. The main feature is that the houses are arranged in rows and columns, surrounded by buildings or walls, with a square plan and watchtowers at the four corners. Most of the housing within the area is unit housing, with corridor style or "Da Qitou" (one living room and one room). Villages surrounded by a single surname have an ancestral hall on the central axis, while villages surrounded by multiple surnames have their own ancestral hall. There is a heping and a pond at the gate, which is one of the main differences from Guangfuwei Village.
Some Hakka villages are square and some are irregular circles. Some of the houses within the perimeter are arranged in an orderly manner, while others are messy. In addition, the houses in the surrounding villages include single rooms, single-room houses, and units. There are also rooms with partition walls built in the middle to become suites or "back-to-back" with front and back doors. There are various forms. The Jianqiao Walled Village in Fengshun, eastern Guangdong, is surrounded by water, and there are independent halls and horizontal houses within the perimeter.
12. Diaolou
Most of the Hakka diaolou seen in eastern Guangdong, northern Guangdong, Heyuan, Huiyang, Shenzhen and Hong Kong are similar to wall towers, wall dragon houses or "wailong houses". "Doulangwu" are combined together, and most of them are four-corner buildings. Only in Shixing and other areas in northern Guangdong can we see independent large-scale watchtowers. The buildings cover an area of ??200 to 400 square meters and are four or five stories high. There are patios and wells in the watchtowers (a few have no patios), and some also have ancestral halls. Each floor is a corridor-style single room with wooden floors and corridors. The outer wall is made of large pebbles and blue bricks, more than 1 meter thick, and is particularly strong.
There is only one door in the whole building, with a stone door frame, and four or five layers of barriers such as an iron wooden door, wooden bars, and iron gates. There is also a fire-proof water tank on the door, which is really impregnable. A village can build several watchtowers that are at the corners of each other to protect the safety of the entire village. In the event of bandits or war, the villagers would help the elderly and children to garrison in the watchtowers. This is also a unique feature of Hakka architectural culture in northern Guangdong.
13. Chinese and Western style enclosures
The construction of Chinese and Western style enclosures is relatively late, the earliest was in the late Qing Dynasty, but most of them were built after the 1920s and 1930s. product. Hakka wanderers who wandered overseas did business and became rich. They never forgot their homeland and were attached to the traditional life of the nation. When they returned home, they bought land and built houses. Influenced by Southeast Asian countries and Western cultural ideas, they adopted the traditional plan layout of a dragon-shaped house or a horizontal house with a slight change in some parts. For example, some house styles changed the arc-shaped dragon and flower heads into long and straight lines. It is shaped like a pillow and is placed horizontally like a pillow. The locals call it "pillow house", such as Nanhua Youlu, Wanqiu Tower, Lianfang Tower, etc. in Meixian County. Doors, windows, halls and Western-style decoration, especially the addition of balconies, give the ancient and deep traditional architecture a fresh atmosphere.
14. Free style enclosed house
The so-called free style refers to a type of Hakka residential form without obvious layout rules. The owner starts from his own subjective wishes, combined with financial resources and land conditions, to build a building that is comfortable to live in, beautiful in appearance, and in line with the Yin-Yang and Five Elements concepts of Hakka traditional residential Feng Shui.
15. Hong Kong Hakka enclosed houses
The main forms of Hakka enclosed houses in Hong Kong include hall-shaped houses, pole-shaped houses, concave-shaped terraced houses, castle-style enclosed buildings and a combination of Chinese and Western styles. Enclosed buildings, etc.
In the North New Territories where Hakkas live more concentratedly, as well as in Tai Chi Ling, Pat Heung, and Eighteen Heung in Yuen Long, bar houses and concave-shaped terraced houses are the most common. The bar house is miniaturized, with only two types of horizontal bars and parallel bars. In the horizontal bar type, a wall with the same height as the front eaves wall is built a few meters away from the front eaves wall to enclose the front yard, with a side door for entry and exit. The concave-shaped row houses are most widely distributed in the northern New Territories. The so-called "concave-shaped row houses" are formed by connecting multiple units of "locked houses".
Chai Wan Luo Wu is a typical doulangwu that absorbed the residential culture of Guangfu and dates back to the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty.
Yinhuaju, Lingmei Village and Yangjia Village in Yuen Long are relatively late and were all built in the late Qing Dynasty. They are typical Eastern Cantonese-style horizontal houses.
The three houses built by the Chan family in Tsuen Wan during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty have a rather special form. Its layout is a form between a horizontal house and a castle-style enclosure.
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