Shigatse Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition Center. Photo by reporter Gesang Lunzhu
The ancient city of Sakya in Shigatse. Photo by reporter Tenzin Gava Tashi Dhondrup
Lázar Norbulingka. Photo by reporter Bai Ma Zewang
Qamdo Dongba Residence. Photo by reporter Xiaoyong
Nyingchi Bunker. Photo by reporter Bai Ma Zewang
Barkhor Street, Lhasa. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Sun Fei
Tibetans live on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and since ancient times, they have gradually lived in tents from living in caves and caves, and gradually living in rammed earth houses, stone houses and wooden houses.
Behind every building with strong Tibetan characteristics, there are natural geographical and historical factors, as well as its distinctive regional and cultural characteristics, as well as the cultural codes in the buildings that belong to this highland.
Tibet is the main part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. From the 10,000-year history of human culture, we know that the Tibetan Plateau has never been an "isolated island". With a number of major archaeological discoveries in recent years, it has not only enriched the research content of Tibet's local history, but also made people have further research results on the history of ancient civilization in this region.
Among them, what are the history, characteristics and types of Tibetan architecture?
Quji Jiancai, an expert in ancient Tibetan architecture, has his own set ·of conclusions: Tibetan architecture has a long history, special structure, diverse forms, and unique styles, and has gone through seven major periods: ancient times, Tubo, Guge, Sakya, Pazhu, Ganden Pozhang and modern times.
On November 30, 2018, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage jointly announced the Niadi site (located on the western slope of the Niati Mountain in Shenzha County, Nagqu City, northern Tibet), a major archaeological discovery and research results from the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which pushed forward the history of the first human ascent of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to 40,000 years ago, and also wrote the highest and earliest record of prehistoric human conquest of high-altitude extreme environments in the world. The site is 4,600 meters above sea level, and is a Paleolithic wilderness site with large scale, well-preserved strata, dense distribution of stone products, and distinctive stone tool technology.
"Early people chose to move non-stop and over long distances according to the adaptability of the environment according to their living conditions and resources such as food, and this movement is beyond the imagination of our modern people." Xia Gwangdui, a researcher and deputy director of the Tibet Autonomous Region Institute for the Protection of Cultural Relics, said this in a lecture. He said that in recent years, with the continuous advancement of archaeological work, ancient ruins in Tibet about 10,000 years ago have been discovered, and there are many of them.
The Karuo site, which was once recognized by the archaeological community as one of the three major primitive cultural sites in Tibet, has stone houses. The site has found the remains of houses, roads, stone walls, stone platforms, stone enclosures, ash pits and so on.
Relevant research results show that the Karo site is divided into two phases: early and late. 28 house foundations were discovered. The round-bottomed house, which has been restored, is a conical shack-style building made of interior columns and surrounding oblique columns. There are also vertical wall semi-crypt and ground buildings. The semi-crypt houses of the late period, with stone walls on the four walls of the cave, and some of them continued to build one-story dwellings in the upper part, showing the local characteristics of the building and the progress of construction technology. The remains of cobblestone platforms and stone enclosures that may be related to primitive religions have also been found.
Muya · Quji Jiancai believes that most of the buildings in Tibet are made of in-situ materials, in order to adapt to the local climatic conditions and geographical environment to the greatest extent, and to concentrate the wisdom and aesthetics of the Tibetan ancestors to give the cultural connotation of the building itself.
It is undeniable that although Tibet is a vast area and there are certain differences in architectural styles in different places, no matter where it is located, people can tell at first glance whether the building in front of them is a Tibetan house or used for other Tibetan buildings.
This certainty comes from the distinctive appearance of the building itself, from the regional characteristics, and from the connotation and charm of the Tibetan architecture itself, and it is also a cultural symbol that has been precipitated by the people who have lived in the world for thousands of years.
According to historical data, the ancient Tibetan ancestors, originally lived between the cave and the rock crevice, hunting for a living, to domesticate animals, from the animal fur, learned to make tents by hand, slowly learned to build walls, after mastering the process of building walls, simple rammed earth houses appeared. When the use of stone tools was perfected, there were solid stone houses. The continuous improvement of rammed earth and stone masonry techniques led to the emergence of some defensive watchtowers.
According to historical records, the Potala Palace is the leader in the construction of watchtowers in Tibet. Muya · Quji Jiancai was full of praise for this building, saying that the scale of the Potala Palace Castle in the Tubo period was magnificent, the decoration was exquisite, the structure was solid, and the security was strict, which was incomparable to the palace castle in previous dynasties.
Throughout history, in Tibet, almost every period of time, there will be new palace-style buildings in various places, such as the Guge Dynasty, Sangzhuzi, Gyantse Zongshan and other well-known cultural sites in Tibet that are still being visited by the world at this stage.
In places with abundant forestry resources, wooden house architecture is another distinctive building in Tibet, especially in the southern Tibetan valley.
As one of the few experts in the field of ancient architecture in Tibet, Mu Ya · Qu Ji Jiancai has traveled all over the mountains and rivers of Tibet, and he has devoted almost his life to the protection of Tibet's ancient architectural heritage and the research work in the field of traditional architecture.
According to him, the traditional Tibetan wooden house construction generally cuts the round tree in half and uses it as pillars and beams to form a kind of "parallel pole" barrier, which becomes a traditional wooden house when it is surrounded by a circle. In some places, four pillars were erected first, and then wooden planks were made on top to make houses, and this phenomenon is mostly seen in places such as Motuo.
Because of the hot and humid climate in this area, overgrown with weeds, and the frequent activity of poisonous snakes and other animals, the people who lived there erected four pillars from the land, vacated the lowest floor, built their houses with wooden planks on the high ground, and covered the roof with a layer of straw or banana leaves to ward off poisonous insects and beasts. This is a distinctive feature of Tibetan wooden houses.
Let's talk about the traditional Tibetan architectural concept and the uniqueness of the appearance. Tibetan architecture in general gives people a sense of beauty, mystery and the magical beauty of being simple and rugged. It is plain, and there are generally no messy ornaments, reflecting the simplicity and simplicity of the Tibetan people's consistent aesthetic performance. But the national culture contained in the details behind each building makes it unique.
In terms of design alone, traditional Tibetan architecture is generally a square room with a pillar in the middle. And so on, the left and right areas are larger, and then the columns are added. The houses face south, which is the experience of the ancestors of the Tibetan people, and is directly related to the natural geography of the plateau with a cold climate but abundant sunlight. Only south-facing houses can fully absorb the daylight of the day on the plateau. In addition, the traditional buildings in Tibet are not built too high, and the optimal height is to have the best light and comfort and warmth for the occupants.
In terms of appearance, windows are the main components of the façade of the building, and the arrangement and size of the windows in traditional Tibetan architecture may be different, the position of the windows on the wall, there are high and low, and the arrangement may not be on a horizontal line, which seems random, but gives people an irregular beauty.
The most striking feature of the exterior of Tibetan architecture is the use of red and white colors to set off the overall layout, and it is said that the Tibetan ancestors were mainly nomadic and their food sources were single, mainly meat and dairy products. In the simple cognition of the Tibetan ancestors, meat is red food, and dairy products are white food, which is equivalent to meat food and vegetarian food in people's mouths today. The resulting red-and-white culture gradually extended to the architectural level, painting the houses of ordinary people in white to distinguish religious sites with red and yellow as the main colors.
In addition to red, white and yellow, traditional Tibetan architecture also often uses black, which is generally used on both sides of beams, windows and lintels. In short, each color and different use is given a certain religious and folklore meaning. Door frames, lintels, window frames, walls, roofs, column heads, etc., are painted in a variety of colors to show a bright and dazzling color effect.
In addition, the Tibetan ancestors, who were mainly nomads, were born with a love for animals such as horses, cattle, sheep and sheep, so most of the residents in Tibetan areas who continue to this day have the custom of placing yak horns on the door of their houses. If you dig deeper into the meaning, it is probably also a totemic worship of the early ancients.
There is also the custom of erecting flagpoles on the roofs of Tibetan buildings. Unlike today's belief that this custom originated from religion, the flagpole was a collective symbol of each tribe and village in the early days. It was not until later that elements of religion were added and continue to this day.