Comments on: Siheyuan: the Chinese Housing Dream

By: Hutonging It Up – China Marc

Hutonging It Up – China Marc — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 07:48:27 +0000

[...] other day, my class took a trip to go visit a Siheyuan and a hutong. The Siheyuan is a small compound that serves as a home for approximately three [...]

By: Jensen Liu

Jensen Liu — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:38:31 +0000

@Mech_Man Hi, Mech, Keep this in mind, Japanese and Koreans learned almost everything from China for thousands of years till 19th century. So don't be surprised if you see something similar between these countries.

By: Mech_Man

Mech_Man — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:09:57 +0000

This architecture is stunningly beautiful. I never knew that Chinese architecture was accented with the color brown like Japan and, Korea. I’d only seen red and orange accent colors which are nice for community buildings but maybe not for a home.

Everyone’s selling their social, cultural, and spiritual souls to be “modern.” It’s blind and foolhardy.

By: Pete

Pete — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:51:06 +0000

I like the diagram.

Not many people are building siheyuan these days — it would be prohibitively expensive in terms of land — but the Hong Kong Heritage Museum was recently built in siheyuan style, although on a massively bigger scale.

By: Jensen Liu

Jensen Liu — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:12:22 +0000

@Liz Nowadays, unfortunately, most Chinese live in “modern” concrete cells in the cities, It’s impossible to have such luxury one floor house in the center of modern city.

If you go to the countryside, you can still find traditional style housing as I introduced in several posts. But tradition is fading everywhere.

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:53:29 +0000

Thanks – very interesting post. It seems like privacy was very important in the past? Would you say privacy is less important nowadays or the same? It would be very interesting to see how is modern Chinese housing!

By: Zhu

Zhu — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:36:25 +0000

I like 四合院。 It’s a nice way to build a house if you ask me