Sinicisation and ethnicity: spatial characteristics of Shui vernacular architecture in Guizhou, Southwest China

Yizhi Zhou,Miao Wei

doi:10.1186/s43238-021-00021-1

Abstract

The Shui people are an ethnic minority living in southern mountainous areas of Guizhou Province, China; they have retained many vernacular houses with a history of over a century. Using spatial analysis software depthmapX to perform visibility graph analysis and field-of-view analysis with space syntax, we examined the sequence, organisation, and hierarchy of the living space in Shui residences. We found that those residences were influenced by external cultures, resulting in two types of plan layout: front-middle-back (type A) and left-middle-right (type B). Those two types of spatial combination were evident in two different line-of-sight axes. With type A, the hearth was the core and served as the daily living space of the family. With type B, the ancestral altar was the core and served as the ritual space. The historical coexistence and changing relationship of the two axes reflect cultural exchange between the Shui and Han as well as with other foreign cultures. This study concludes that the diversity of spatial forms that developed in different historical periods is an important attribute of Shui houses and those of other ethnic minorities in Southwest China.

Highlights

Among the world’s ethnic minority areas, indigenous cultural traditions coexist with the influence of the dominant culture; their interrelationship has changed throughout history
The open living room was used to organise the public area of the house
Through visual analysis with space syntax, we identified two axes of ritual and daily life

Summary

Introduction

Among the world’s ethnic minority areas, indigenous cultural traditions coexist with the influence of the dominant culture; their interrelationship has changed throughout history. That dynamic process has shaped the often-underestimated diversity of the built heritage in such areas. In studies about the built heritage in China’s ethnic minority areas, there are two major problems. One is that most research tends to interpret such minority architecture as stable and ahistorical. Studies have largely ignored the dynamic, changing process in different historical periods; that is the case with respect to the twentieth century, when rural areas of China underwent radical economic and social transformation (Xu et al 2011; Long and Liu 2016).

Methods

Conclusion