Widely evident in the great halls from imperial China, and exhibiting superb craftsmanship, zaojing are taken for granted as symbols of prestige (see Figures 2–4). Some researchers affirm that zaojing were a product of Confucianism, as it helped to emphasize the unity of heaven and man on the one hand, and a hierarchical society on the other. Situated in a central position of a ceiling, zaojing may be a square, an octagon, or a circle, among a number of shapes. Equivalent to domes of heaven in the Western context, zaojing were believed to have a magic power protecting the architecture and inhabitants it enshrined. In particular, a zaojing was built within a structure to prevent the building from fire, an urban disaster that frequently took place in the past. Focusing on the archeological and literary sources from early China, this chapter inquiries about the origin of zaojing and attempts to articulate how zaojing evolved as an architectural means to assuage human fears, as well as to express human desires and longing.

Zaojing and Water Well

Both the physical form and the literary term jing 井 suggest that zaojing had an inherent connection with a water well. To further illustrate this linkage, a Neolithic water well in the Hemudu cultural relic site (modern Yuyao, Zhejiang Province) is selected as a case study (Figure 3.1). The plan of this well consists of an irregular circle on the periphery and a square in the center (Figure 3.2). Viewing the section, the circle is actually the surface of a basin that was full of water during the flooding season.

With a side length of two meters, the square is a shaft that sinks to the bottom of the basin, thereby forming a water well. During periods of drought, the well continued as a water source. Circular and semicircular wooden piles, whose diameters are about six centimeters, were densely erected against the four internal sides of the well. They were then reinforced by a square frame constructed by four horizontally laid round logs, each with a diameter of about 17 centimeters (see Figure 3.2). These four wooden logs were assembled with tenon and mortise joints. The wooden structure of the well, particularly its square frame on the upper edge, reflects the early pictograph character of jing (Figure 3.3).

Although wooden structures have dominated Chinese architecture for more than three millennia, none from before the Tang dynasty have survived. Fortunately, their forms were mirrored in stone architecture, reliefs, pottery models (mingqi), murals, and even decorative housewares. The Han dynasty, in particular, gave rise to numerous representations of dougong in tomb structures, stone reliefs, pottery models, freestanding stone towers (que), and literary descriptions. My research builds on these available sources.

To Liang Sicheng and Liu Zhiping, the development of dougong in architecture reached mature status during the Han dynasty. Yet they, like most modern researchers, have regarded it primarily as a structural element, and their analyses have been largely typological, tracing the evolution of various dougong systems over succeeding dynasties. As Nancy Steinhardt has summarized, “Han bracket sets were studied according to three principal features used in all later bracketing”— that is, the cap block and other blocks, the arm, and the number of layers.

Chapter 2 takes a different approach, examining the column and bracket set not as a formal or structural element, but as a symbolic, social, and cultural one. In this respect, I partly follow the lead of Jiren Feng, who has studied the symbolic associations of column and bracket sets in the Song dynasty. Through a detailed analysis of literary sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, with the focus on Yingzao fashi, Feng points out that the multilayered dougong system was often likened to flowers and branches to suggest the auspicious “blossoming” of the structure. Although Feng adduces some physical and literary evidence from early China to support his argument, I find that the meanings attendant on the column and bracket set in earlier centuries differed considerably from those prevalent during the Tang–Song dynasties. The account below focuses on the role of dougong during the Han dynasty, when the element was primarily associated not with natural forms, but rather with beliefs about the heavens, mythology, and the afterlife.

The Political Symbolism of the Han Dynasty

As the second regime to unify the central territories of what is now known as China, the Han dynasty is commonly regarded as a golden age in Chinese history, the influence of which is still evident. The Han gives its name, for example, to China's majority ethnic group and to its common written script.

As the two important elements in Chinese architecture, dougong and zaojing are beyond structural or functional necessity, and they are largely absent in most commoner's dwellings—the housing form for the majority in premodern China. Perhaps it is due to their lack of connection with basic needs or utilitarian architectural necessity that their cultural significance, as the connotation of transcendence, can be understood.

To attribute a transcendental quality to dougong and zaojing is because both are transformed from ordinary objects to something extraordinary. Dou in its original text means a ladle that is an everyday living utensil, and the term zaojing was derived from a water well that provided natural resources for daily life. In the process of transformation, arts played an essential role of adopting dou and well in important buildings, and then, within these small cosmoses, uplifting them to celestial bodies. The Chinese longing for heavens, also as a ruling social theme, is evident through the development of dougong and zaojing. As this book has demonstrated, the sources of inquiry extend far beyond architectural purview, involving scholarship in archaeology, philology, sociology, arts, and history. From such multidisciplinary perspectives, I hope that the connection between small architectural elements (i.e., dougong and zaojing) and broad Chinese cosmology can be revealed more fully.

As Chapter 1 has demonstrated, due to very limited textual record from the Shang-Zhou dynasties, pictorial patterns and physical forms of bronze vessels become the main source of inquiry. In these pieces of bronzes and associated ritual ceremonies, there is a strong religious struggle to establish a dialogue with the gods, searching for assurance and blessing. In response to the uncertain living environment, dictated by unforeseeable natural disasters or human wars, the bronze artifacts were solid and tangible, and served as an emotional anchor to the early Chinese in their unstable world. They had a close relation with their contemporaneous architecture too. In this sense, the scholarly claims that the Chinese did not intend to lodge their urban history in buildings, but rather in text as a form of accumulated memories, seems untrue. Such claims can also be contested by numerous solid artifacts, such as stone tombs, reliefs, and pottery models, from the Han dynasty.

As Chapter 2 indicates, both text and material objects flourished in the Han period, both expressing certain worldviews.

Among various research topics on dougong, the most intriguing question is how dougong was formed in the first place. There have been seemingly ceaseless efforts in searching for the origin of dougong. Yang Hongxun, for example, pointed out that the birth of dougong was a result of structural evolution. In early wooden architecture, he posits that there was a physical transformation of posts supporting an eave to an oblique beam, then to a curved beam, and eventually to a curved arm with block (Figure 1.1). In the essay titled “The Origin and Development of Dougong,” Han Baode ponders over the early forms of dougong. Through inquiring about the physical remains and literature related to dougong, mainly from the Han dynasty, he challenges one theory that dougong was derived from the stone architecture in the West. Han raises the hypothesis that the birth and development of dougong was most likely influenced by religious forces. Guo Huayu also enquires about the origin and development of dougong and from a typological perspective, presents some early cases reflecting the forms of dougong in chronological order, including a bronze vessel, a lacquerware illustration, a bronze table, some pottery models, and their associations with many remaining historic buildings.

According to archaeological discoveries, Chinese architecture can be well traced back to the Neolithic settlements. Many foundations of palace and religious buildings from the Chinese Bronze Age have also been excavated. Yet the form of dougong is largely absent from these archaeological sites. It is in the Han dynasty that the flourishing of dougong is widely evident (as discussed in Chapter 2). Certainly, there is a gap between the absence and the flourishing of dougong, which suggests a long formative period of centuries of dougong prior to the Han period.

In examining the early form of dougong, some research has observed the emergence of dougong patterns in the bronze vessels and furniture from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Yet these studies only briefly discuss the physical form and its association with the bracket set system in much later architecture. Chapter 1 thus revisits the topics on the origin of dougong. Through examining a number of bronze vessels, bronze furniture, and bronze structural components from early China that relate to dougong in particular and architecture in general, the research attempts to articulate a possible path of the development of the dougong bracket set during the Chinese Bronze Age.

Dougong 斗栱 and zaojing 藻井 are two important architectural elements that were constructed in the great halls of China's royal palaces, major temples, as well as in the underground tombs of social elites. The former consists of dou (block) and gong (arm) that form a structural unit as bracket set. Often in multiple forms known as chonggong 重栱 and placed on the top of columns and beams, dougong plays a critical role in holding the upper structure securely (Figure 1). The latter is a special structure sunken into the ceiling, often profusely decorated with carvings and colorful paintings in various motifs (Figures 2–4). Zaojing is translated variously as “caisson,” “cupola,” and “lantern ceiling.”

The construction of zaojing, quite often, would involve dougong as either structural units or decorative elements. Both of them would appear at the upper proportion of architecture, and they were once the symbols of social status in imperial China. Sumptuary law in the Tang dynasty (618–907), for example, codified that nobles below the royal family members could not adopt the construction treatment of zaojing and chonggong (i.e., dougong in its multiple form) in their houses. Although housing control was loosened in the Song dynasty (960–1279), zaojing and chonggong were still prestigious architectural features that were forbidden in commoners’ houses. In addition, their houses were not allowed to adopt the five-color decoration motif. In the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), sumptuary law for housing seemed to be tightened up, as it stipulated that the court officials’ houses could neither build the double-eave roof and chonggong nor the painted zaojing. The commoner's houses could not apply dougong or colored paintings.

The seamless connection between zaojing and dougong is also reflected in the famous Song construction manual Yingzao fashi 营造法式 (1103), in which zaojing has a particular term douba zaojing 斗八藻井, suggesting a dome-like zaojing supported by eight dougong units. This literary account is perfectly manifested by a relic of zaojing built in 1013 that remains in the great hall of Baoguo Temple, in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province (Figure 5).

As unique and important elements in classical Chinese architecture, dougong and zaojing have been richly studied by scholars from the West and Asia ever since the early twentieth century.