Wood and the Forbidden City

My thesis is, at its most simple, a question. Why did they build in wood in Imperial China? Everyone knows the Forbidden City. It conjures images of massive low wooden buildings on stone platforms with golden roofs. Or maybe you’ve seen pictures of pagodas, those towering buildings with thin tiled roofs working their way in layers up the structure. But when you think about important buildings in China, you’re likely first to think about the Great Wall, a stone structure you can apparently see from space, it's so big. So, if the Chinese could build something so gigantic as the Great Wall, why are their versions of the Empire State Building and Buckingham Palace built of wood? 

I wanted to follow that question with a look at how the Chinese kept their buildings in good shape during their built lives. What did repairwork look like in the Ming Dynasty, or the Tang? Wood obviously can last a long time, the Ryves Holt House is clearly from at least 1700, there are English buildings even older, into the 15th century or earlier. Even in China, there are wooden temple buildings from the Tang Dynasty (618-907). But more often, wooden buildings require a lot of upkeep. Fortunately wooden Chinese buildings are built a lot like Lego, with standardized sizes that can come apart and go back together again. Also, wooden buildings have an awful habit of catching fire and burning to the ground. How did the Chinese think about reconstructed and repaired buildings?

And finally, I wanted to pull both the Why and the How together to see how this could impact or change modern architectural preservation practices. Currently buildings tend to be ‘frozen’ in time. Obvious and reversible repairs are made to keep the building standing, but what would be good options for Chinese buildings that would fit into their theory of architecture? And would any of that discussion give a different lens through which to view preservation of wooden buildings of other architectural traditions? 

I ended up using the Forbidden City, and its three main buildings as the case studies for my thesis. I chose the FC because I was unable to secure funding to travel to China and visit the Temple of Confucius at Qufu. This temple is built at the site of Confucius’ home and thus has an ancient, well documented history, including many reconstructions. I had previously visited the FC as an undergraduate on a political science study abroad program, so I at least had walked the site and had access to quite a few personal photos. Both complexes are also UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so there were a lot of English language records to use in research, although I was able to read some things in Chinese and German, too. 

The Forbidden City was originally built during the Ming Dynasty and heavily reconstructed during the Qing. So, it had some events I could use to look at reconstruction practices and philosophies, but considering the Chinese architectural tradition is easily longer than 2000 years, I had hoped to use an older site. Fortunately, Imperial Palaces as a specific, regulated form stretch back those millenia and I was able to tie the current Forbidden City to its predecessors in other cities to help look at why things were rebuilt over and over again. 

I am pretty confident in my discussion of the How - how were buildings reconstructed, why would cause reconstruction, etc. The art of architecture in China was really more of a craft, the forms of the buildings were formulaic and standardized. If you wanted to build a house, its form was determined by your place at court, your wallet size, and your site’s location. If you were the Emperor, you had access to very specific forms, colors, and materials, but your palace had to abide by certain rules of geometry and geography. The most important of which was to be sure to face the core buildings to the South. Rebuilding was both practical and philosophical, repaired and reconstructed buildings still carried the same ‘authenticity’ as the original, but rebuilding also brought a sense of renewal. Buildings were often rebuilt or renovated when a new Emperor was enthroned or for other important events. 

However, there was one theory I was not able to fully investigate in my thesis due to reasons. This theory is about the metaphysical nature of wood and stone. Wood is supposed to be seen as ephemeral, fresh, a sign of growth and change, etc. But stone is cold, death, eternal. Especially once I had read several books and articles by Wu Hung (He’s getting his own posts eventually!) I started to really see that the current accepted view of Stone vs. Wood was perhaps not quite as nuanced as it should be, and probably too skewed by Western philosophy. There is obviously some crossover, but a lot of Wu Hung’s arguments tended towards more of a discussion about practicality and mimicry. There is so much more to the discussion of stone vs. wood when you start to look at funerary architecture. Many times tombs in China were constructed of brick or stone… does brick count as stone?... But the brick/stone was carved to mimic wood. In some ways, the stone became wood through mimicry. That’s quite complicated to get into right now, but suffice it to say this is the main idea I really want to dig into in the future. Just like reconstructed buildings could perhaps be seen as mimicking the older incarnation, that mimicry is a way they become the original. Mimicry has a huge part to play in Chinese painting, just look up all the ‘forgery’ that is rampant in the art world, but it didn’t have a negative connotation all the time, in some ways mimicking a painting was the highest form of flattery. 

Anyway, my conclusions in my thesis were then shifted at the eleventh hour when my advisor had me incorporate a discussion about the use of stone in Indian rock cut temples. Which are extremely fascinating, by the way. How does architecture change when you don’t build it, but reveal it like a marble block becoming a statue? The only problem was I had no time or ability to see if I could tie this into my ideas about mimicry and authenticity relating to reconstruction of buildings. It was really great to have an example besides stone tombs, but much of my arguments had originally been using indigenous Chinese philosophy, so incorporating India would mean I also now had to discuss Buddhism. ...A thesis is not supposed to be big, it is just supposed to be an original piece of scholarship. A bit of primary source research, but ultimately an article! Not a book! But now I was staring down the barrel of discussing India, the transition of Buddhism from China to India, the integration of Indian Buddhist art to native Chinese art forms, the native Chinese philosophies of Daoism and Confucianism, their interactions with Buddhism in philosophy and architecture and art, then I had to discuss the history of Imperial Palaces, specifically the history of the Forbidden City, Chinese funerary practices, geomancy and the I Ching, modern architectural preservation practices, ancient/historical practices of building and repairs, etc, etc. It got so completely out of control, that the final product really suffered. 

So, ultimately I fell out of love with the subject entirely. But by researching the Ryves Holt House and sparking my fascination with research and architecture again, I was able to revisit my thesis and see it with some emotional distance. I can see its problems and why they happened, I can see the core ideas I was trying to get to and that they are valid explorations. I think I just got lost in the weeds and sort of steamrolled by academic politics. I really do want to look at this project again in the future, do some more research, talk to some more experts and academics, and maybe make something real out of it. 

And if you are working on a thesis, or research project, or really any project at all, these things happen. Projects can get away from you, they can grow in insane ways that you may or may not be able to control. But if you can take a step back for awhile, even the few years I did with this one, or if you can regain control, you can always bring it back or shift perspective and make the thing what you want it to be. I like the idea that something started or something done is better than nothing at all. Perfection is overrated. I tried with this thesis and it didn’t turn out how I wanted it to, but I learned a lot and I can use all that knowledge in the future. 

Last Updated: January 20, 2021

*photo is my own, taken in June of 2009