For more than three thousand years, Chinese life – from the city and the imperial palace, to the temple, the market and the family home – was configured around the courtyard. So too were the accomplishments of China's artistic, philosophical and institutional classes. Confucius' Courtyard tells the story of how the courtyard – that most singular and persistent architectural form – holds the key to understanding, even today, much of Chinese society and culture.
Part architectural history, and part introduction to the cultural and philosophical history of China, the book explores the Chinese view of the world, and reveals the extent to which this is inextricably intertwined with the ancient concept of the courtyard, a place and a way of life which, it appears, has been almost entirely overlooked in China since the middle of the 20th century, and in the West for centuries. Along the way, it provides an accessible introduction to the Confucian idea of zhongyong ('the Middle Way'), the Chinese moral universe and the virtuous good life in the absence of an awesome God, and shows how these can only be fully understood through the humble courtyard – a space which is grounded in the earth, yet open to the heavens.
Erudite, elegant and illustrated throughout by the author's own architectural drawings and sketches, Confucius' Courtyard weaves together architecture, philosophy and cultural history to explore what lies at the very heart of Chinese civilization.
Author(s): Xing Ruan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 368
City: London
Cover
Halftitle page
About author
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Prologue
I
II
III
IV
V
Part One Heaven A Panacea from the Courtyard
1 What Makes the Chinese House
The conceptual parti
Confucius’ courtyard
From object to void
2 Heaven and What Is Below
The Chinese tian
The King’s City
The built world and the literary world
Part Two Heaven and Earth Equilibrium in the Courtyard
3 The Divergent Tower
The emergence of the individual and metaphysics
Immortality and freedom imagined
4 Secluded World and Floating Life
The middling hermit
The artful transition
5 A Deceiving Symbol
The travelling merchant and the oddity of their courtyard
Women in Chinese marriage and household
Behind good taste and refinement
6 Literary Enchantment and the Garden House
Li Yü’s world
Internalized garden and the ‘horizon’ beyond
Courtyard and decorum
7 The Golden Mean Finely Tuned
The anatomy of a Beijing quadrangle
Life and ambience in the Hutong
The city as a large quadrangle
Distinctive character versus uniformity
8 Living like ‘the Chinese’
The ‘guest’ Chinese and their Chinese courtyards
Chinese form and exotic meaning
Part Three Earth The Emancipation of Desire and the Loss of Courtyard
9 The Irresistible Metropolis
Modern city born of refugee crisis
From diminishing courtyard to porous house
10 The Assault of Modernity
Quadrangle without the Confucian world
The lingering courtyard
Nothingness, horizon and discreet pleasure
Epilogue: The Four or the Five
Notes
Index
