"As a comprehensive overview of Chinese everyday folklife, China's Living Houses is invaluable. It removes the arbitrary academic categorizations of anthropological and architectural approaches and underlines the legitimacy, vitality, and embeddedness of belief in everyday surroundings.... An excellent resource and interdisciplinary link for humanities and social sciences approaches to Chinese culture.... Meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated" --China Review International, Fall 2000

"A thorough and highly readable book on a lesser-known part of Chinese life and traditions--its domestic architecture.... Educators and their students in several disciplines would benefit from Knapp's excellent coverage, which includes not only art and architecture, but anthropology, sociology, religion, and politics as well." --Education About Asia, Fall 2000

It has been said that for the Chinese "a house is a living symbol," one endowed with meaning and the result of conscious action. As Ronald G. Knapp has shown in earlier studies of Chinese vernacular architecture, the spaces and structures that comprise dwellings throughout China are replete with striking meanings, echoing the most fundamental aspects of Chinese culture. China's Living Houses is the first book in any language to explore comprehensively the extraordinarily complex links among folk beliefs and household ornamentation across time, space, and social class. Well-written and copiously illustrated, it reveals dwellings as dynamic entities that express the vitality of Chinese families as each journeys through life.

Part One, "In Quest of Spatial Harmony," explores the ways in which Chinese families structure their dwellings as templates for guiding social behavior and asserting hierarchical distinctions. This section also examines how households go about choosing auspicious building sites through the application of fengshui. Once a house is built, the inhabitants use pictorial and calligraphic charms to guard it against calamities and misfortune.

Part Two, "In Pursuit of Good Fortune," reveals the purposeful efforts Chinese make to ensure their share of fu--"good fortune," or "happiness." Fu incorporates a constellation of meanings that bring good fortune to the family and includes five basic components: longevity, wealth, health, love of virtue, and a natural death in old age. Layers of meaning are communicated in numerous places within Chinese houses through an astonishing array of ornamentation that employs visual metaphors and punning language. Auspicious woodblock prints, paper cutouts, calligraphic scripts, among many other forms, appear each New Year and are sometimes restored as the year progresses.

China's Living Houses includes traditional and modern drawings and photographs taken by the author throughout China over the past thirty years. Specialists and students of China in many disciplines will appreciate the author's wide-ranging approach that relates symbols and folklore to their use in daily life.

Ronald G. Knapp is SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geography at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of China's Living Houses: Folk Beliefs, Symbols, and Household Ornamentation (UH Press, 1999) and China's Vernacular Architecture: House Form and Culture (UH Press, 1989), and the editor of Chinese Landscapes: The Village as Place (UH Press, 1992).

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