House Home Family: Living And Being Chinese

House Home Family: Living and Being Chinese

Drawing on the work of leading scholars in the fields of anthropology, architecture, art, art history, geography, and history, House Home Family explores and analyzes the functional, social, and symbolic attributes of Chinese dwellings. It goes beyond generalization to clarify the diverse nature of house, home, and family in China, exploring such topics as the Chinese garden as an integral part of living, house-building ritual and fengshui, architectural aesthetics, the inter-relatedness of furniture and architecture, preservation of historical structures, the structure and development of the family (jia), gender and household space, the role of lineage in the construction of ritual and social space, the function and meaning of the architectural division of space, and domestic space and privacy. The Chinese house, the elementary space in which a family lives and works, resonates the tensions between continuity and innovation that characterize China today. As a dynamic instrument of socialization and a domain of propriety, its "inner" and "outer" spaces as well as ornamentation and ritual helped shape the identity of the Chinese and simultaneously serve as a reflection of this identity.