Walls, walls, and yet again walls, form the framework of every Chinese city. They surround it, they divide it into lots and compounds, they mark more than any other structures the basic features of the Chinese comunities. There is no real city in China without a surrounding wall... It would be just as inconceivable as a house without a roof... There is hardly a village of any age or size in northern China which has not at least a mud wall, or remnants of a wall, around its huts and stables. No matter how poor and inconspicuous the place, however miserable the mud houses, however useless the ruined temples, however dirty and ditch-like the sunken roads, the walls are still there, and as a rule kept in better condition than any other constructions...
[terre pisé construction image]
Of the Western Han capital of Chang'an:
Along a circuit of some 28 kilometres, arose a rampart wall 15 metres high and 12 metres wide at the top... backed by a flat area, or terreplein, more than 60 metres wide, raised about 6 metres above the surrounding land, and protected by a moat about 46 metres wide and 5 metres deep... All this was an effective reply to the techniques of beseiging a city which had developed during the Warring States period...The cores of Chinese city walls were always of earth or rubble, but in later centuries they were usually provided with outer, and also often inner, facings made of large grey burnt bricks laid in lime mortar... (pg 33)
Of "The" Great Wall:
The Wall has had many periods of importance and periods of decay. After the third century AD, there was little maintenance, but during the sixth and seventh centuries AD there was major reconstruction... during the Yuan, the Wall lost all significance, and this is why its present state is essentially Ming, for the following dynasty, the Qing, also found it irrelevant... (pp. 39-40)...[the Great Wall] was not so much the construction entirely from scratch of a continuous work, but rather the linking of a number of Walls which had been built previously by the various Warring States, the purpose of which was to break the shock tactics of nomadic horse-archers, or of cavalry belonging to feudal States which had adopted such tactics...
The walls were not only to keep out the barbarians or to prevent marginal Chinese from joining them, for some were built along the boundaries of individual feudal States...
The best estimate of the Great Wall's length puts it at about 6324 kilometres, if all its branch walls are counted, and some 3480 kilometres if the main line alone is taken...
The effectiveness of the Gear Wall in keeping out the troops of nomadic horsemen was probably considerable... the impenetrability of the Great Wall certainly seems to have been a factor in starting a series of shocks in tribal relations which transmitted themselves like a chain reaction to give rise to disturbances and invasions of the nomad settlement frontier in Western Europe. (pp 41-42)
Of building construction:
The fundamental concept of [traditional] Chinese architecture lies in the arrangement of one or more courtyards to compose, sometimes in a very complex way, a general walled 'compound'. The main lengthwise axis is always (or ideally) north-south, and the chief buildings, or halls, are always placed at right angles to it... The entrance to a large composition is likely to be through a gate... (pg. 46)Of cities and towns:The main features of Chinese buildings may be summarized then as follows: (a) emphasis on the roof, and its construction in sweeping curves; (b) formal grouping of buildings round central courts, and marked attention to axis; (c) frankness of construction, the supporting pillars of the massive roof timbering being clearly visible...; and (d) lavish use of color, not only in roof tiles, but on painted columns, lintels and beams, richly bracketed cornices, and broad expanses of plastered walls. (pg. 52)
The Chinese town... was not a spontaneous accumulation of population, nor of capital or facilities of production, nor was it essentially a market center. Above all, it was a political nucleus, a local centre in the administrative network, and the seat of the bureaucrat who had replaced the feudal lord... They were planned as rational fortified patterns imposed from above on carefully chosen places... Their population was merely a sum-total of individuals, each of whom was closely linked with the village from which the family originated, and where its ancestral clan temple still stood. (pg. 55)
(see Lu-Lung)
Other mundanities:
From Yi-Fu Tuan's China, in The World's Landscapes series:
The effect of man on the soil has also a constructive side. In the long-occupied and densely settled valleys and plains the sutrient level of the alluvium is largely a human achievement. The intensity with which the Chinese farmer fertilizes his land --using almost every conceivable source thaht can be locally obtained-- is well known. However, since an important proportion of the fertilizer occurs in the form of night soil, tehre is always a larger amount available near the big cities andtowns than in the remote country districts. Large cities are therefore surrounded by irregular rings of fertile soil which extend at least as far as a man can walk and return in a day with a load. From the air, the city appears to be the center of a green oasis which fades gradually to the brown of the distant countryside. This distinctive pattern is produced by the flow of nitrogen and other plant foods in the form of agriciltural produce from the farms to the city and the return flow of faeces from the city to the farms; but only to farms within easy walking distance of the city, for greater distance would raise transportation charges sufficiently to make it uneconomical to transport night soil... (pg. 31)The need for fuel has made, and still makes, a heavy toll on Chinese forests. An enormous amount of wood is consumed for cooking and for heating, particularly in North China where the winters can be bitterly cold... Forests in North China were ravaged in the past for the making of charcoal as an industrial fuel. Fromn the tenth century onwards the expanding metal industries swallowed up many hundreds of thousands of tons of charcoal each year, as did the manufacture of salt, alum, bricks, tiles, and liquor... The demand for wood and charcoal as both household and industrial fuel had reached such a pitch by the Sung dynasty (AD 960-1279) that the timber resources of the country could no longer meet it, and this probably led to the increasing substitution... of coal for wood and charcoal... (pg. 39)
E.H. Schaefer has recently said that the most civilized of all arts was responsible for the deforestation of much of North China. The art was the art of writing, which required soot for the making of black ink. The soot comes from burnt pine. "Even before T'ang times, the ancient pines of the mountains of Shantung had been reduced to carbon, and now the busy brushes of the vast T'ang bureaucracy were rapidly bringing baldness to the T'a-hang Mountains between Shansi and Hopei." (pg. 41)
[image maintaining watercourses]
From Needham Science and Civilization in China:
Duke Huan interrogates Kuan Chung on the best location for a capital city (2nd or 3rd century BC):"I should like to hear", said Duke Huan, "about the harmful influences of water"
...Kuan Chung replied "...It is the nature of water to flow, but when it reaches a bend [in the channel] it is retarded
and when the bed is full [the water] behind pushes forward that which is ahead.
Where the land slopes downward it flows along smoothly,
but where it rises [the water] is impeded.
Where the bank curves [the water] pounds against it and crumbles it away;
[in other such places] [the water] becomes agitated and leaps up.
When it leaps up it runs to one side.
On running to one side it forms whirlpools.
After forming the whirlpools it returns to its central course.
On returning to its central course [and slowing] it deposits its silt,
and when this has occured [the channel] becomes obstructed.
Obstruction leads to a change of course.
Change of course brings fresh stoppage.
Thus impeded, the river runs wild.
Running wild, it injures men.
When it injures men, there arises great distress among them.
In great distress they treat the laws lightly.
Laws being treated lightly, it is difficult to maintain good order.
Good order lapsing, filial piety disappears.
And when people have lost filial piety, they are no longer submissive."
(vol 4 part 3 pg. 223)And the Trimetrical Classic of River Control:
'Dig the channel deep
And keep the spillways low'.
This six-character teaching
Holds good for a thousand autumns.
Dredge out the river's stones
and pile them on the embankments
(etc. etc. --details)
And to obviate floods and all disasters
Year by year dredge out the bottom
'Till the iron bars clearly appaer
Respect the ancient system
And do not lightly modify it.(vol 4 part 3 pg. 295)
