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The Meaning of Ancient Chinese Cities |
Brief course description: eMail the instructor The past is always present in China. Learn how ancient Chinese cities were constructed to capture and redistribute the life force of the universe. You'll never look at the Forbidden City or the towered walls of Xi'an in quite the same way after you understand their underlying purpose. Continuing beyond the influence of Chinese urban design, the course examines the microcosms of residential structures and social space in China, and their change and continuity over time. |
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MENU . = new material Urban Planning in Pre-Industrial China Structure of the City The Mandate of Heaven The Field Well System < REVISED Oracles & Divination < REVISED Dragons in Ancient China siheyuan & mingtang < REVISED fengshui < NEW Detailed Timeline for Chinese History Emperor Yu's Flood [PDF] Yongning ward in Tang Chang'an Skinner's Work Reviewed The Big Dipper Clock Lost Meanings from the Yijing Bronze Age China Yin Oracle Archive Bronzes in historical context The Nine Sacred Vessels of Shang Astrology in the Zhou period
*Note: The website fails to display some of the figures on some browsers, but the PDF Acrobat file caputures them all, though the formatting is a bit rough in places. |
Preliminary Course Outline 5,000 years of Cultural Stability in China - implicationsCan you read the Bible in the original? The Past is always Present in China Neolithic origins of the field-well system The field-well system and the Chinese cosmos The Mandate of Heaven Heavenly vessels of the Shang All is lost in the collapse of the Chou (Zhou) Regaining the Mandate of Heaven The Zhou diaspora & 'a hundred schools' of thought Enfeoffment & the Mandate of Heaven The Duke of Yansheng (Confucius) Chinese assessment of human nature How the mandate was regained Qi and the Mandate of Heaven Why old Chinese coins have square holes Polaris is the home of heaven Where Santa gets his powers Power flows from north to south Fengshui - hinder the wind and hoard the water As emperor, how do you employ heaven's breath? The chain of being Tension twixt kinship & ability as organizing principles The end of the Zhou and the power of culture Entrenching and directing civil power Entwining religious and political power Managing Qi locally Fixing populations in place geographically and socially Qi engineering works Canals, flood control, the largest dam in the world City management of water and wind The "Qi-antum" physics of ancient Chinese cities Location of the city Where and how Qi enters the city Interior circulation Compass points Where does Qi go when it leaves the city? Qi on the road 7 - league boots & robotic horses Qi, political hierarchies, and central place theory Capitals, cities, towns, villages, neighborhoods, families Skinner and the mathematics of Qi The geography of human resources and productivity Modular planning Economic activity within the ideal Chinese city Bringing the outside inside Placing and managing markets Managing merchants, goods & money Systems of numerology and the structure of the city The ancient Chinese well-field system As reflected in the world of the dead As reflected in the sacred vessels As reflected in architecture How it informs the structure of the city The nine-square mandala Squares and rectangles Changšan (Sui-Tang Capital City) History of the city population size Modular planning illustrated Management of Qi regular and irregular elements Management of markets Interactive model of ancient Changšan Mapping the empire to the capitol Touring the empire within the capitol The structure of the central government Reflected in the well-field model Reflected in the nine-square mandala The spread of Chinese urban design in East Asia Returning to the microcosm of the family compound Residential structures and social space Modular building its origins and plan Concluding Considerations What aspects of the traditional city still survive? Will it survive modern Chinese capitalism? Parallels with the Warring States Period? | |