Why was Europe First?

 

What kind of comment is that? That is a totally Orientlaist and bias view. First of all, you never been to all China and Beijing is only a city of whole China and its certainly not the oldest city of China. Secondly, Chinese buildings were made primarly from woods (prone to fire) and thus only few very old wood buildings have been preserved.

 

Why is stone building better than the wood building? artisitcally speaking?

Should you judge a building only by its age? Or should we look from a wider perspective?

 

Please help me here, why is it the fact that Chinese mainly wood as building material makes Chinese artithect inferior?

Another interesting fact to note is that the largest palace ever built on earth in history is probably the Weiyang Palace of the Han dynasty.



"Chang'an (today's Xi'an City of Shaanxi Province) was the capital of China in the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), and was constructed and expanded on the basis of the Xingle Palace of the Qin Dynasty (221-206BC). The northern rampart was close to Weishui River and southern rampart was built along walls of the Palace. Buildings in the Chang'an City were mainly palaces, among which the Changle Palace and the Weiyang Palace were the most famous ones.


The Weiyang Palace, situated in southwestern Chang'an (5 kilometers from today's Xi'an downtown), was a meeting place for the emperor and ministers in the Han Dynasty. The overall layout waw quadrate and bounding walls surround the Palace. The eastern and western walls measured 2,150 meters each, and northern and southern, 2,250 meters each. The whole Palace had an area of about 5 square kilometers, one seventh of the city's total area.


Historical documents record that the construction of the Weiyang Palace was organized by Han Emperor Gaozu and supervised by his minister Xiao He soon after the Changle Palace underwent renovation. After the Weiyang Palace was completed, emperors in the Han Dynasty all lived here, so it enjoyed more prominent fame than other palaces. Poets in later generations often used the Weiyang Palace as the synonym of Han palaces in their works. The whole Palace consisted of more than 40 halls. The Front Hall of Weiyang Palace was built besides the southern main gate and its huge structure base of rammed earth still lies there today.


Now the existing base of the Front Hall is about 150 meters from east to west and over 350 meters from north to south, and the highest point in the north reaches more than 10 meters. At the point about 200 meters north of the site of the Front Hall was the Jiaofang Hall discovered in 1987, where empresses of the Han Dynasty lived. On the north of the Weiyang Palace are the sites of the Tian Pavilion and the Shiqu Pavilion, which belonged to the Imperial Library of the Western Han Dynasty (206BC-8AD). Eave tiles with characters of "Chang Le Wei Yang" and "Chang Sheng Wu Ji", Han air bricks and aqueducts could be found from time to time.


Major architectures within the Palace include: the Front Hall, Xuanshi Hall, Wenshi Hall, Qingliang Hall, Qilig Hall, Jinhua Hall, Chengming Hall, Gaomen Hall, Baihu Hall, Yutang Hall, Xuande Hall, Jiaofang Hall, Shaoyang Hall, Bailiang Platform, Tianlu Pavilion and Shiju Pavilion, etc. Among them, the Front Hall is situated at the center of the whole Palace, with its base altar spanning about 350 meters from north to south, 200 meters from east to west and 15 meters high at the north tiptop. Historical records show that Weiyang Palace had a Sima Gate (gate for defense) at each of the four sides, a watchtower at each of the northern and eastern gates -- the East Watchtower was for seigneurs to meet the emperor, and the North Watchtower, for scholars and ordinary people to submit written statements.


The Han Dynasty palaces in Chang'an are the palaces that served for the longest time in Chinese history. Chang'an was not only the political center of the Western Han Dynasty, Wang Mang regime, Western Jin, Former Zhao, Former Qin, Later Qin, Western Wei and Northern Zhou dynasties, but also, many major historical events took place here, for instance, Zhang Qian, a diplomat of the Western Han Dynasty, set out here to inaugurate the Silk Road; Wang Zhaojun, one of the four beauties in ancient China, requested of her own accord in the Palace to marry the Khan of the Hun, and so on."

 

By the way, do you know any structure that survived from Classical China period (500 BC ~100 AD)??

 

 

Here's the wikipedia.org info on the statue just as a quick reference:

 

 

 

 

Quite impressive indeed...

 

"stone last longer and has more luster." - Hrothgar

 

Good point, I agree Hrothgar, and the Chinese must have thought so too when they started converting many different architectural buildings and monuments to stone and brick instead of wood (which obviously burns easily, but withstands earthquakes rather well). However, I do not agree with you in an artistically speaking standpoint, which is what Dream 208 was getting at. When it came to Chinese latticework, detail on roof-shingles and beautifully-painted wooden-carved pillars in temples in palaces, wood has a lot more diversity than stone. However, this is not to say that there aren't impressive Chinese (or other) stone-engraved and stone-carved masterpieces.

 

 

Example of Chinese wooden latticework; example of Chinese wooden-pillar-carving-and-painting within the interior of Beijing's Temple of Heaven

 

And when you picked the examples of architecture found in Florence or Venice when comparing the Chinese pagodas and bridge images I posted, I presume this is a fair statment of one's opinion, and obviously has backing with Florence's Santa Maria del Fiore, or Venice's bell-tower of St Mark's Campanile. However, not every city in Europe during the Middle Ages or even the Renaissance was as brilliant and sophisticated in architectural triumphs as Florence and Venice were, and equally with the Chinese, some small Chinese towns boast maybe an impressive temple or two, but the larger, grander Chinese cities of old held tons of monuments to glorify the state and beautify the city-scape and natural surroundings outside.

 

Eric