Quadrangle Homes

For Chinese Literature this year, we were asked to read a Chinese masterpiece called Dream of Red Mansions, or Story of the Stone. It depicts a family of highest rank in China during feudal society. It follows the Chia family, comprised of an grandmother dowager, her sons, their wives, concubines, and servants. And, they each had many hundreds of personal servants! (I drew up a family tree just to keep track of the characters.) While reading it, I had a hard time imagining what this "mansion" must have been like physically. It depicted the mansion as actually a series of buildings, set among tree-filled courtyards, rock formations, and streams.

I found out. On our last day in Beijing, we visited two 'quadrangle homes' on very different scales. A quadrangle home has rooms set around a common courtyard. It is a very traditional, rapidly disappearing style of Chinese home in Beijing.

The first was the home of a Prince that was the model for the home described in Dream of Red Mansions. It was simply beautiful! On a nice day, I could have wandered there for hours. Set in the middle of Beijing, it has courtyard after courtyard intermixed with the "natural" (man-made) amenities mentioned above. I hope you can get a sense from these two pictures I'll post.

The second was a private home of a 6th generation Han family that has now opened their home for visits during the Olympics. Their home consisted of one quadrangle. Traditionally, the grandparents live on the north side (in order to get the sun in southern windows), the servants live on the south side, the sons on the east, and the daughters on the left. In the picture, I'm sitting in their courtyard.

I did smile at this information contained in information about quadrangle homes; it said, Happy the man with sunshine, fishbowl, pomegranate, a fat dog, and a plump wife. I would say Jim has it made! (Connie)