| Why are there so few ancient Chinese architecture?

Why are there so few ancient Chinese architecture?

Df S asked:


Considering how big China is and how long its history is, there seems to be a rather small number of preserved buildings from its past. There are a good amount of buildings from the Ming and Qing dynasties in Beijing and such but there are hardly any well-preserved buildings from the Tang. Compared to Korea or Japan, both significantly smaller countries, they seems to have dozens and dozens of ancient architecture. Why is that? Did China not preserve the buildings as much as the Koreans and Japanese did because of the Cultural Revolution?

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Comments

6 Responses to “Why are there so few ancient Chinese architecture?”

  1. Mr Hex Vision on May 22nd, 2009 3:22 pm

    Yes. Most of it was due to the Cultural Revolution. There many building there either worn down or used as factories.

  2. Aaron Y on May 26th, 2009 12:26 am

    The Cultural Revolution destroyed many of them, I would put it at around 60%.

  3. Dsianim on May 30th, 2009 8:09 pm

    I agree with you. China needs to make more effort to preserve and develop its own, rather than copying western style in large scale.

  4. KathyM on May 31st, 2009 2:43 pm

    Because Japan and Korea are smaller countries, their architecture are more concentrated, thus giving the illusion that there are more. China is a big country with many cities that are “unknown” to foreigners. If you want to check out ancient Chinese architecture, don’t just concentrate on Shanghai, Hong Kong or Beijing, but other Chinese cities, too. The history of China didn’t just happen in these three cities. In fact, Beijing wasn’t the capital until the last dynasty and Shanghai and Hong Kong were just little fishing ports.

  5. platinum_inc on June 1st, 2009 9:53 pm

    There are loads of ancient Chinese architecture, but the thing is, the Chinese government prefers to showcase its ‘western buildings’ as opposed to its ancient and traditional buildings.

    Also, during revolutions, the winning leaders would destroy the buildings and try to change the culture of people’s everyday life, such as forcing people to wear a specific garment, have a certain hairstyle etc.

    Having said that, I think you will find that the number of Chinese ancient architecture exceeds those of Korea’s and Japan’s. People only think of the east of China and forget about the rural areas, which have well-preserved culture and buildings.

    In addition, Chinese people prefer to look forward rather than to look back, which is the case with Koreans and Japanese.

  6. Elena S on June 2nd, 2009 5:46 am

    if you went out of Beijing, you would find plenty of towers, houses and tombs which were built in the ancient times… Beijing isn’t the whole China, you know…

    and do not be so optimistic about Japan… all of their castles were demolished and what you see now is just the reconstruction… as for temples — nobody make a spectral analysis of the stones there, so it’s very likely they were built later than claimed for tourists…