FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.
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for defensive purpose, it is my firm belief that careful planning was previously done in order to make possible the coherent relationship that I have mentioned. If original planning was not enhanced, then what had prompted the builders 200 years later to know where and how to trim off excess settlements in order to build the orthogonal wais? Above all, compared to the Hakka walled village in Sheung Shui, the enclosing wall which was also built during the same period and also for the same protective reasons as Kat Hing Wai, is of much more irregular shape. This further reinforces my assumption.
None of the four wais coincides in size and proportion. This variation is partly due to the size of the extended family, but most importantly, such adjustments are essential to achieve the subtle relationships after each hamlet's position and orientation have been determined. Thus, a square is not a perfect square, but an idealised (or symbolised) square. The dependency of geometrical configuration and proportion in physical forms in China is not so rigid as that of the Western counterpart of the Renaissance period (incidentally concurrent with Ming Peking and Kat Hing Wai): As Joseph Needham points out in his work Science and Civilisation in China, "the Chinese did not feel the need for [geometrical] forms of explanation — the component organism in the universal organism followed their Tao [way] each according to its own nature.”21 Compared to the T'ang Dynasty capital Ch'angan, one that has been designed most closely with the canonical prescription, Kat Hing Wai is the epitome of the cosmic archetype, the most fundamental stratum of agricultural China. The organic expression of wall and moat architecture is symbolic of Heaven and Earth. The palace in the north in the capital can be seen to parallel the shrine of the Earth God in Kat Hing Wai in which both are protective powers guarding their respective territories. The orientation to the four quadrants, the representational north-south axis, and the division of the compound into smaller living units are all too profound for the sinologist and missionary Arthur H. Smith to grasp the intricacy. In Village Life in China, he writes:
It is customary in Western lands to speak of ‘laying out' a city or a town. As applied to a Chinese village, such an expression would be most inappropriate, for it would imply that there have been some traces of design in the arrangement of the parts, whereas the reverse is the truth. A Chinese village, like Topsy.
FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.
89
for defensive purpose, it is my firm belief that careful planning was previously done in order to make possible the coherent relationship that I have mentioned. If original planning was not enhanced, then what had prompted the builders 200 years later to know where and how to trim off excess settlements in order to build the orthogonal wais? Above all, compared to the Hakka walled village in Sheung Shui, the enclosing wall which was also built during the same period and also for the same protective reasons as Kat Hing Wai, is of much more irregular shape. This further reinforces my assumption.
None of the four wais coincides in size and proportion. This variation is partly due to the size of the extended family, but most importantly, such adjustments are essential to achieve the subtle relationships after each hamlet's position and orientation have been determinded. Thus, a square is not a perfect square, but an idealised (or symbolised) square. The dependency of geometrical configura- tion and proportion in physical forms in China is not so rigid as that of the Western counterpart of the Renaissance period (inciden- tally concurrent with Ming Peking and Kat Hing Wai): As Joseph Needham points out in his work Science and Civilisation in China, "the Chinese did not feel the need for [geometrical] forms of ex- planation — the component organism in the universal organism followed their Tao [way] each according to its own nature.”21 Com- pared to the T'ang Dynasty capital Ch'angan, one that has been designed most closely with the canonical prescription, Kat Hing Wai is the epitome of the cosmic archetype, the most fundamental stratum of agricultural China. The organic expression of wall and moat architecture is symbolic of Heaven and Earth. The palace in the north in the capital can be seen to parallel the shrine of the Earth God in Kat Hing Wai in which both are protective powers guarding their respective territories. The orientation to the four quadrants, the representational north-south axis, and the division of the com- pound into smaller living units are all too profound for the sinolo- gist and missionary Arthur H. Smith to grasp the intricacy. In Village Life in China, he writes:
It is customary in Western lands to speak of ‘laying out' a city or a town. As applied to a Chinese village, such an expression would be most inappropriate, for it would imply that there have been some traces of design in the arrangement of the parts, whereas the reverse is the truth. A Chinese village, like Topsy.
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