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Asian Studies Review

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Chinese Architecture and Metaphor:

Song Culture in the Yingzao Fashi
Building Manual
a
Francis Chia-hui Lin
a
Taylors University, Malaysia
Published online: 01 May 2014.

To cite this article: Francis Chia-hui Lin (2014) Chinese Architecture and Metaphor: Song
Culture in the Yingzao Fashi Building Manual, Asian Studies Review, 38:2, 301-302, DOI:
10.1080/10357823.2014.902733

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2014.902733

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 Book Reviews 301

chapters. Overall, Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa is an impor-
tant contribution to cultural studies at an international level. The empirical eld it
opens up for analysis is worthwhile in itself but it also (unwittingly) raises impor-
tant questions about how cultural studies travels in this region and the limits of
its application.

GILBERT CALUYA
The University of South Australia
2014 Gilbert Caluya
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2014.902732

EAST ASIA
Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 19:50 09 October 2014

JIREN FENG. Chinese Architecture and Metaphor: Song Culture in the Yingzao
Fashi Building Manual. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. 320 pp.
US$53.00, hardcover.

As one of a few English-language works on the Yingzao Fashi (Treatise on Architec-

tural Methods and Building Standards) by Lie Jie, this book provides a fresh perspec-
tive on Chinese architectural writing. Unlike the pervasive standpoint that considers
YZFS a technical manual, the author highlights the cultural-political implication and
social value of the text. Through a careful discourse analysis of a series of ancient
Chinese treatises along with the YZFS, the author schematises this architectural text
from a linguistic perspective.
Usually depicted as an ofcial treatise of Chinas imperial architecture, Li Jies
YZFS is like the Ten Books on Architecture that the Roman Marcus Vitruvius dedicated
to Augustus. Yet, unlike the Ten Books, Fengs work argues that different concerns
were highlighted by Li. For instance, as Feng argues, the YZFS paid more attention to
individual elements and specic building technologies. This combines not only the of-
cial standpoints in Western architectural treaties guiding universal construction tech-
niques such as Vitruviuss Ten Books but also individual authorship as well as
experience such as Renaissance architectural theorists Leon Battista Albertis Ten Books
on Architecture and Andrea Palladios Four Books on Architecture. Therefore, apart
from construction techniques and standards, Feng highlights cultural values, implica-
tions and encounters beyond the technologies such as governmentality, supervision
records, and the meanings behind architectural terminology.
It is nevertheless undeniable that the YZFSs main focus is still technology. It is by
no means an easy task to rene the cultural-political subjectivity from such a tech-
nique-oriented and hence apparently neutral text.
In order to approach this goal, Feng strives to peel the semiotic meanings off termi-
nology (metaphoric imagery that represents nature in architecture), to contour the hier-
archy of societal classication (technology, popular culture and Chinese literary
language), and to clarify the gap between learned and unlearned (ruler and ruled). In
the rst instance, the author indicates the analogy between architectural members (con-
stituent pieces of a complex structure) and nature (especially the botanical structure and
the environment) which has not been as highly regarded in Eastern Architecture as in
 302 Book Reviews

its Western counterpart. For example, the classical language of Western architecture
translated various botanical forms into decorative elements such as entablatures and
capitals. The French Marc-Antoine Laugier even proposed the concept of a primitive
hut in 1755, hypothesising that the original building structure reproduced the
morphology of the natural environment. Likewise, the author analysed the meanings
and conceptualisation of architectural terminology in the YZFS with natural forms of
owers. Along with Chinese architectures distinctive tradition of geomantic practice
(fengshui and dili), the author attempts to construct a similar discourse that was
normally only highlighted in Western architecture.
In the second instance, Feng discusses the relationship between the technologies
that were recorded in the YZFS and ancient Chinese popular culture and classical lan-
guage. More precisely, the author maps the hierarchy of social classication in the text
Downloaded by [University of Connecticut] at 19:50 09 October 2014

from the craftsmans inherited skills, to oral records of the populace, and to the ofcial
authorship constructed by governmental ofcials. Therefore, the author indicates differ-
ent degrees of publicity towards the professionals, the public and the government dis-
course. In the last instance, the YZFS is discussed by the author as a form of ancient
Chinas cultural-political ideological projection. In his analysis, the governmental sys-
tem and architectural administration that were institutionalised and further developed
from the Qin to Song periods are carefully discussed. Particularly, the author intends to
explore the gap between ruling personnel and the practical professionals. In his terms,
the author analyses the contents of the YZFS in order to clarify whether Li Jies multi-
ple roles as a learned ofcial, a scholar, a writer and an artist in the text simply
involved being the supervisor of unlearned craftsmen, or whether there was a possi-
bility that those craftsmen who interacted with Li were also educated and able to crea-
tively design and literally record buildings. In this book, therefore, Feng brings
fresh air to the study of Chinese architectural personnel which rarely employed archi-
tects but favoured craftsmen.
Apart from the cultural-political standpoint of seeing the YZFS as primarily a techni-
cal manual, the book also unearths some clues that have not previously been considered
in Chinese architectural studies. The author claims that the YZFS suggests government
concern with promoting market economy and efciency, which aimed to sustainably
operate the building process. The author also discusses the faithfulness of the text, as
the YZFS is a form of historiography. Therefore the text, the author argues, had a transit
in its production process of translating the past into a selective historical record, eventu-
ally being presented as an ofcial ideological standard of aesthetic harmony.
To summarise, this book provides a comprehensive contour of architectural dis-
courses and connects contemporary literature and culture to the YZFS. This work
should be appreciated by those who are interested in a different understanding of the
YZFS that sees the text not as simply a record of architectural techniques but also as a
rich cultural, historical and theoretical source.

FRANCIS CHIA-HUI LIN

Taylors University, Malaysia
2014 Francis Chia-hui Lin
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2014.902733