china-2010

TIMBER FRAMING • DECEMBER

Earlier this year, Richard and Jean Wiborg, aficionados ofChinese architecture, escorted a 25-strong group of archi-tectural adventurers around northern China, visitingancient timber frame buildings. We were in good hands.

Richard is fluent in Chinese and has been studying and sur veyingChinese timber frames off and on for over 10 years, often with thehelp of M a Bing-Jian, an ar chitect, timber frame builder andChina’s reigning expert on historic timber-framed buildings, whofrequently accompanied us.

While it’s largely true that all timber-framed buildings are morealike than different, every culture develops a unique style, and so itis with the Chinese. A central element of the tour was to identifyand learn the singular characteristics of nor thern Chinese timberframes. Mr. Ma (as everyone calls him) and the Wiborgs planned atour that would sur vey the dev elopment of the Chinese timberframe, from buildings a fe w hundred years old to str uctures stillstanding after 1000 y ears or more. We saw and learned so muchthat only a v ery much longer account than what follo ws coulddescribe the breadth of our experiences. Richard and Jean Wiborgmust be thanked for their wonder ful work in preparing this tour.If ever it is offered again, do not miss it.

THREE characteristics stand out in Chinese palace and templetimber frames built in the last 2000 years. They are always built onraised platforms, they ar e always built with at least two rings ofposts (the peripteral or outer ring and the hypostle or inner ring),and the roof eaves always rest on a bracket system assembled aboveand between the posts. Of the three characteristics, it’s the bracketsystem, or tou-kung, that gets your attention and holds it. One iter-ation or another is an essential architectural and structural elementin a great many historical timber frames built in China, whetherutilitarian (Fig. 1) or ceremonial (Fig. 3).

Symbolically, the brackets are an identifying marker of Chinesearchitecture, so much so that the bracket motif is car ved even intoancient stone buildings, and the brackets are fabricated in tile whenan important gateway is made of masonry (Fig. 2).

Structurally, the brackets ser ve important functions. They sup-port a purlin that runs outside the wall plane to support the raftersof superextended eaves, and through a multitude of connectionsthey act as shock absorbers and points of fl ex to resist the shake,rattle and roll of earthquakes (Fig. 4 ).

Today’s academic understanding of the bracket system (and gen-erally of the history of Chinese timber framing) originates in fieldstudies begun by Liang Ssu-ch’eng (1901–1972) and Lin Whei-yin,a married couple, in the early 1930s for the I nstitute for Researchin Chinese Architecture in Peking. Both had studied ar chitectureat the University of Pennsylvania in the 1920s and traveled widelybefore returning to China. The seminal wor k Liang ev entuallywrote in English, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture, editedby Wilma Fairbank and published posthumously in 1984, is beau-tifully composed and illustrated, and includes the compelling his-tory of the brackets.

In the last 400 years, cantilevered eaves have been much reducedin projection, and the supporting function of the bracket similarlyreduced. But perhaps because of their r ole in mitigating thedestructive forces of earthquakes, they remain an essential featureof Chinese palace and temple frames. To get a quick lesson on thebracket system, there is a wealth of information in Liang ’s anno-tated drawings of the Chinese “O rder,” Sung dynasty buildingrules of 1103 and Ch’ing dynasty rules of 1733 (Figs. 5–7).

The illustrations of the early bracket systems sho w how thesloped cantilever arm, the ang, functions structurally. In the oldestbuildings, the tail of the ang terminates under the first purlininside the wall plane, and the beak of the ang (17 in Fig. 5) sup-

Tou-kung Brackets and China’sWooden Monuments

All photos Mike Laine except where noted

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1 Elementary brackets on utility building at N an-ch’an Ssu (782), Wu-t’ai Shan,Shansi Province.

2 Gateway with ceramic brackets, Forbidden City, Beijing.

3 Elaborate brackets of a newly rebuilt temple building in the Forbidden City.


ports a purlin outside the wall plane, using the w eight of the roofinside the wall plane to balance the w eight of the roof over theeaves. As the centuries rolled by and the superextended eaves werereduced, the ang morphed into a simple horizontal cantilever arm.Notice that in the Ch’ing building code manual of 1733, the angis no longer a diagonal member but only a horiz ontal componentwith a fancy beak (Fig. 7).

Illustrations from Liang Ssu-ch’eng, A Pictorial History of Chinese Architecture,MIT Press, 1984, used by permission

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4 Tou-kung at the architecture school, Tsing Hua University, Beijing.

5 Liang’s annotated perspective drawing of the Chinese “Order.”

6 Liang’s representation of Sung dynasty (960–1279) r ules, 1103,with proportional rules in lower right corner.

7 Liang’s representation of Ch’ing dynasty (1644–1912) rules, 1733.

Ali Lam


It is true that in the buildings that r emain from earlier periods,the super-extended eaves often show obvious signs of serious stressand even imminent failur e. For instance, the four hip rafters atKuan-yin Ke, a large hall built ar ound a 52-ft.-high B uddhiststatue, are now supported by long posts, with extensions (F ig. 8).Perhaps the difficulty of maintaining the structural integrity of thelong eaves, given the weight of the huge roof, drove Chinese timberframers to scale back their engineering b y the time of the M ingdynasty (1368–1644).

Liang’s illustrations (Figs. 6 and 7) also sho w the derivation ofthe proportions and dimensions of the bracket members (and thusof every other part of a building). The bracket arm, or ts’ai, is oneof the short horizontals in a bracket set. During the Sung dynasty,there were eight standard sizes, all with the 3:2 proportion of depthto width. The depth of the ts’ai, divided into 15 par ts called fen,then drives everything. First, the width of the ts’ai is 10 fen. Then,writes Liang on page 15 of A Pictorial History, “The height andbreadth of every building, the dimensions of every member in thestructure, the rise and cur ve of the r oofline, in short, every mea-surement in the building, is to be measur ed in terms of fen of thegrade of ts’ai used.” The larger the ts’ai, then, the larger the fen. Thehighest grade of ts’ai was reserved for the emper or. In Chinesearchitecture, size matters, and no building could be taller or wider,or use timbers larger than the emper or’s. The status of a buildingwas determined b y how close in dimension it came to theemperor’s. But regardless of status, all monumental timber-framedbuildings are scaled the same way, beginning with the ts’ai.

WITH some or none of this information in mind, 25 of us showedup in Beijing early in April. Our professional guide, Mr. Chen, metus at the airpor t and managed to get our trav el-stunned group tothe four-star Sunworld Hotel. We started the next morning with anassault on the F orbidden City, joined b y a million or so othertourists in Tiananmen Square. We were herded through the crowdwith our Mr. Chen in the lead, holding up a flag emblazoned withthe TFG logo so we could keep him in sight. Most of the other mil-lion tourists were in similar gr oups, also with flag-bear ers in thelead, so ther e was a parade feel to it all. As w e made our waythrough this most amazing imperial compound, Mr . Chen sup-plied us with a steady stream of information, rattling off dates andexplaining use patterns, the symbolism of the elaborate painting

motifs on the buildings and much mor e. Many of us w ere seeingChinese buildings for the first time, and it was v ery impressive,even overwhelming. The Chinese think big (Fig. 9).

For a couple of hours, w e inched our way thr ough the publicsection of the Forbidden City, standing in awe of Chinese timberframing in its most elaborate form––learning about gemstones b ystarting with diamonds. After the morning tour , we boarded ourbus and headed off to ward T’ien-t’an, the Temple of Heaven, acomplex of buildings southeast of the Forbidden City, with a stopfirst for lunch. S ince tour gr oups are so common in China,numerous restaurants specialize in group feeding. Mr. Chen knowsthem all. We settled into one not far fr om the Temple of Heavenand had a meal that would become familiar o ver the next twoweeks. We sat at round tables for ten, with a giant turntable in themiddle piled with a doz en or more plates of stir-fried, deep-friedand steamed food, mostly v egetables, pork and rice. Mr . Chenassured us that he had checked with the chef to make sur e thatthere was nothing too spicy or w eird for our Western tastes––thatit would be just like the Chinese food back home! There was defi-nitely something for ev erybody, and always mor e than we couldeat. Beer was the beverage of choice, or tea of course.

The most r emarkable structure in the Temple of Heaven, theworld’s largest r eligious architectural complex, is Ch ’i-nien Tien(Qi Nian Dian), the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, measuringsome 104 ft. in diameter and 125 ft. tall, an astonishing buildingand a display of the Chinese thinking big in the 15th centur y(Fig. 10). The model on display behind glass gives a notion of howmassive are the full-length coopered posts that go from foundationto roof (compare the riser height, probably 7 or 8 in., in the shor tstairway). The model also sho ws the countless brackets at theperimeters of the triple roof structure (Fig. 11).

Unlike the model, the interior of the building is painted, and,although the doors are open, there is no admission to these majortourist destinations, which makes sense giv en the thousands whocome every day. But the interiors ar e dark and it is har d to seeinside, so the model was v ery helpful in illustrating what exactlywas going on str ucturally inside the H all of Prayer. In spite of itsoverwhelming size, the Temple of Heaven and its surroundings arevery peaceful places. I could have camped there for days.

For the next four days, with or without Mr . Ma and his assis-tant, Simone Wang, we toured temples and imperial buildings

8 Massive hip brackets at Kuan-yin Ke, or Hall of Avalokiteshvara, Hopei Province, built in 984, with added post under super-extendedeaves. Building has survived 32 major earthquakes.

9 Maze of brackets supporting roof of T’ai Miao, Imperial Ancestral Temple, Imperial Palace, Forbidden City, Beijing. Rebuilt in 1545.

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around Beijing and the surrounding area, each one an astoundingpiece of work and worth every minute we had to examine them.

We spent a particularly interesting day at Tsing Hua Universitywith Professor Wang and other faculty, where we had a two-hourdiscussion and question-and-answ er session on Chinese timberframing, with a focus on brackets. We asked lots of questions aboutthe brackets and ear thquakes. To Western minds, it ’s counterintu-itive that a building with an extraordinarily heavy roof (80 lbs. sq. ft.or more) sitting on a fl exible bracket loosely connected to a postloosely connected to the foundation will withstand ear thquakessuccessfully. But it does. The flexibility of the buildings is the pri-mary reason for their survival. The absence of diagonal braces andthe vast numbers of connections, many of them long thr ough-tenons without pegs, not only allow for a great deal of flex, but the

latter also provide enough force to muscle the building back to itsoriginal shape when the shaking stops.

On our second visit to the F orbidden City, we examined a no-public-access section in the northwest quarter, in the vicinity of theRain Flower Pavilion, a Tibetan temple, accompanied by Mr. Maand Mr. Li, the director of restoration for the Forbidden City. Hetook us into the heart of the construction zone (Fig. 12). Much ofthe area has been quarantined since the 1920s. All ar ound us wesaw traditional Chinese hand-crafted carpentr y, plastering andpainting on r estored or r econstructed buildings. Conspicuouslyabsent were compressors and hoses, pneumatic tools or scatterboxes with cor ds running everywhere to po wer tools and appli-ances. We saw no G radalls or for klifts, no electric lights. I t alllooked medieval, and so did some of the tools in use (F ig. 13).

10, 11 Ch’i-nien Tien, Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, in the Temple of Heaven, Beijing, ca. 1420, burned and rebuilt 1895,104 ft. in diameter and 125 ft. tall. C utaway model shows full-length coopered posts.

12, 13 Below under the gaze of privileged tourists, workmen cart pavers in a cour tyard under reconstruction in the ForbiddenCity. Below right , rough and ready mason’s tools, including steel-soled planes used to trim and edge-bevel cast pavers for grouting.

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DATONG (Ta-t’ung), a city of 3 million kno wn for coal-mining,locomotives, rubber and heavy tr ucks, is a two-hour plane ridewest of Beijing. Some of our ignorance of 21st-century China wasdispelled during the bus ride into D atong from the airport. Ournew guide, the v ery intelligent and informativ e Anna Liang,pointed out that Datong the city is moving—that is, a new Datongis being built next to the old one. O ur very modern bus took usdown a v ery new highway trav ersing a maz e of ne w streets andboulevards, wide and straight, thr ough a forest of cranes er ectinghigh-rises in every direction. It’s possible you have never seen any-thing like this. I cer tainly had no idea that so many cranes existedin the world, much less all appar ently gathered here in this cornerof China. And the concept of mo ving a city, all at once, was defi-nitely new. Once again, I was r eminded of the Chinese ability tothink big, and of the power of the Chinese government.

The primary purpose of our stay here on the rim of China’s coalregion, with its countless po wer plants spe wing horizon-killingsmoke, was to visit the oldest timber-framed buildings in China.We spent five days in the countr yside between Datong andPingyao, the latter a UNESCO World Historical Site with citywalls dating from 1370 and thousands of ancient houses, venturingforth in our comfor table bus to r emote sites where these ancienttimber frames have persisted for so many centuries. The buildingswe visited, Shan-hua Ssu, F o-kuang Ssu, N anchan-Si, Fo-kungSsu, Chin-t’su and sev eral others, ar e the wooden tr easures ofChina, and they evoke in a visitor the r everence and awe of mag-nificent structures in all ancient cultures.

The Hanging Monastery, or Hsuan-k’ung Ssu, about 40 milessoutheast of D atong in S hansi Province, which w e visited on acold, snowy day, certainly got our attention for its audacious loca -tion about 150 ft. in the air abo ve a riverbed (Figs. 14 and 15). Amonk called Liao J an is cr edited with founding the institution,which is devoted equally to Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.When we examined the deep mortises in the stone cliff for the tim-bers that hold up this narrow swallow’s nest built piecemeal begin-ning about 1400 years ago, there was in our minds more than a bitof the question, “ What were they thinking?” The unsightly longposts under the cantilevered buildings are a modern addition, per-haps a precaution to support the stream of tourists who wind theirway through the temple every day, but their slenderness ratio doesgive one pause.

Standing at the entrance of the F o-kuang Ssu Temple, built in857 during the Tang dynasty (618–1907) and tucked into a deepvalley of the Wut’ai mountains, I was o verwhelmed by the com-mitment required to erect this structure, especially 1153 years ago.These were daring and energetic carpenters! The intricate can-tilevered bracket system that suppor ts the superextended eaves isbold engineering that can only be the result of centuries of practiceon buildings that have vanished (Fig. 16).

This survivor, China’s second-oldest kno wn wooden temple(brought to light b y Liang Ssu-ch’eng in 1937) is a testament tohuman devotion and to humanity ’s persistent need to er ect awe-inspiring structures. We also saw China ’s oldest kno wn woodenbuilding, the main hall at nearby Nan-ch’an Ssu, dated to 782.

WHEN I first heard of this trip , the lure for me was to be in thepresence of Mu-t’a, the Wooden Pagoda at Fo-kung Ssu in YingHsien, Shansi Province, built in 1056 (Fig. 17).

Mu-t’a is octagonal and appears to be a fiv e-story building. But“since each upper stor y is underpinned b y a mezzanine story,” asLiang points out on page 68 of A Pictorial History, “it actually con-sists of nine tiers of superposed orders.” Structurally, then, Mu-t’a isa nine-story tower, topped out by a finial 183 ft. above the deck—by modern standards the equivalent of at least a 15-story building.Fifty-six types of brackets hold up various porches, roofs and walls,making the pagoda a textbook example for any student of Chinesearchitecture. The building is a wizened giant displaying everythingawesome in an ancient wooden building: grace, elegance, o ver-whelming grandeur, the courage, tenacity and skill needed to buildit, and great age. Mu-t’a, burned and rebuilt 1191–1195, repaired1320, 1508, 1722, 1866 and 1928, but not r ebuilt since 1195, issuch an emotionally moving structure that for anybody of any faithit could be a place of worship . At 815 years old, however, it coulduse a bit of help. The crushing weight of the upper stories is takinga toll on certain lower timbers (Fig. 18), and the tower shares a tiltwith the better known one at Pisa. —Mike Laine Mike Laine ([email protected]), an experienced builder and fur-niture maker lately specializing in entr yways and gates, oper atesWooden Heart in Menlo Park, California. For tour leader Richar dWiborg’s perspective, visit www.richardwiborg.com. An earlier articleabout Beijing appeared in TF 94, and a series of analytic ar ticles ontraditional Chinese framing appeared in TF 16, 17 and 20.

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14, 15 The Hanging Monastery near Datong was founded ca. 600by the monk Liao J an and has been r epeatedly augmented andrebuilt. The slender props are recent additions.

16 Author standing under hip rafter bracket overhang of main hall,Fo-kuang Ssu (857), Wu-t’ai Shan, Shansi Province. Corner post’sleft-hand spiral grain, dreaded by Europeans, seems to have causedno harm.

17 Mu-t’a, the Wooden Pagoda at Fo-kung Ssu, Ying Hsien, ShansiProvince, 1056, 183 ft. high.

18 Crushed timbers in the first lev el brackets, Mu-t’a. Paper tagappears to be part of a building-monitoring system.

Beth Bonora

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china-2010

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