"25mm Chinese Farmhouse" Topic
11 Posts
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Masse de Decision | 20 Jan 2020 2:07 p.m. PST |
I'm getting back into the hobby after 20 years largely because the homes I've been living in haven't been large enough to accommodate my miniatures. Now that I've purchased a larger house, the miniatures have finally come out of storage. While painting some 25mm Samurai from the Heian period and looking for additional troops on the internet, I came across some First Corp Chinese Warring States figurines. Since I'm ethnic Chinese (3rd generation U.S. citizen) whose family can trace our genealogy back to the lost kingdom of Chu, I put in an order with the intention of building a 25 mm. DBA Chu army. This got me to thinking that while I have a modest collection of Roman buildings, I had nothing suitable for Asia. I crafted this farmhouse last night using styrofoam, popsicle sticks, bamboo skewers, modeling clay, painter's putty, cardboard, and wood glue as my primary building materials.
The sytrofoam that's used in large packages is easy to work with but has the disadvantage of soaking up paint and dissolving when sprayed with a sealant. This incidentally makes for an impressive ruined building effect. Since I didn't want a ruined farmhouse, I got around this by spreading painter's putty over the main body of the cottage, the cottage roof, and the shed. The walls and patio were covered with popsicle sticks that were cut to size and used wood glue to glue them in place. The roof was made with putty to which I added bamboo skewers as "supports" for the thatched roof. As the putty was drying, I painted it. I noticed that when pulling the paintbrush straight up, it created an interesting pattern, so I did this for the entire roof using different shades of paint. This house features a cottage with an attached animal shed.
My grandfather grew up in similar type building. While our family history has forgotten what role our ancestors played in the Kingdom of Chu we do know that after Chu fell, the surviving members of the family fled south as far away from the Qin forces as possible. They wound up outside Guangzhou (known to the British as Canton) in southern China and established a clan village. A clan village is essentially a commune in which all the men are related. (To avoid inbreeding, men always married women from outside the village.) The elders would look after the children. The men and women would work the fields, maintain the irrigation ditches, and cook meals. This worked for several centuries but somewhere along the line, things began to break down. Since my particular family has never been very large, there came a point when other families began complaining over issues related to what we would call a return on investment i.e. that larger families were putting in work to benefit smaller families like mine. The income that had once been equally shared became proportional and by my grandfather's time, my family had fallen into poverty. Grandfather's solution was to emigrate to America after the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 and the Second World War was finally ended in 1945. It's interesting to think that if not for my grandfather's foresight, the family might still be living in a tiny cottage with none of the educational, professional, and economic advantages that we've had since becoming U.S. citizens. My grandfather's old house didn't even have electricity or plumbing. It DID have a fireplace but I left the chimney out as my research has suggested that Warring States era peasant housing would not have had fireplaces. |
dBerczerk | 20 Jan 2020 7:41 p.m. PST |
An interesting post. I enjoyed that, particularly your family history. |
Stosstruppen | 21 Jan 2020 6:27 a.m. PST |
Nice work, and interesting story. Thanks for sharing! |
Grelber | 21 Jan 2020 12:59 p.m. PST |
Interesting story! I also like the way the house has both tile and thatch roofing: it looks like things went downhill financially at some point. I've seen drawings of rural houses in other countries with additions or repairs that look significantly different from the rest or the house. Grelber |
Masse de Decision | 21 Jan 2020 11:04 p.m. PST |
Believe it or not, by rural Chinese standards this wasn't an awful house. Back during the Warring States period, really impoverished peasants lived in crude huts with hard packed dirt floors. It was pretty much a hard scrabble and miserable existence, particularly since the Warring States were up in Northern China. The lost kingdom of Chu was situated in what is now Hubei Province. Temperatures range from a low of about 33 degrees F to a high of about 86 degrees F. The rich had beds and even floors that were built over wood fired brick ovens. The poor huddled around smouldering fire pits wrapped in whatever they had. In contrast, Southern China has temperatures that range from about 46 degrees F to 90 degrees F. I think life must have been easier in the south. The growing season was longer and there were a lot more crops that could be grown. It's a pity that my family's low birth rate (and high infant mortality rate) kept the family from having enough helping hands to make the farm prosper. Grandfather did a brave thing in leaving the old country. He couldn't possibly have known what the future would bring. As it was both of his surviving sons became doctors. I'm a teacher. My sister is an accountant. I have cousins who are attorneys and civil engineers. Before my grandfather died, his sons bought him a home and provided income for his retirement. When he grew too old to live on his own, my grandparents moved in with my Uncle. My grandfather's sacrifice made my father's life as well as my own, possible. It's strange to think that if my grandfather had been a less resolute, that the family's entire future would have been much different. I wonder if this is why so many of us revere our ancestors; the idea being that we owe a debt of gratitude to the ones who have gone before. |
Grelber | 21 Jan 2020 11:20 p.m. PST |
Your comments are interesting. Perhaps Bill will drop by to whack me upside the head for getting political, but I have often wondered if Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans regret their ancestors' decisions to move here, since the once enormous economic lead the US had over both countries had diminished dramatically. Grelber |
Masse de Decision | 22 Jan 2020 5:28 p.m. PST |
I was born in the states but was raised abroad since my father was a doctor in the U.S. military service. While it's true that China has progressed since Mao's huge flop known as the "Great Leap Forward" which was anything but, the government remains quite oppressive. Criticism of the government is not tolerated. Religious minorities (including Christians) are being persecuted with hundreds if not thousands Muslims being sent to reeducation camps. Some of the world's worst pollution is in China. 350,000 deaths each year are attributed to air pollution and 60,000 die from contaminants in the water. The quality of life in rural areas is truly appalling. The conveniences that one now has in the cities is simply not available in the country. 51.3% of the nation's population is still rural and there's a huge income disparity between people who live in the cities and people who live in rural areas. The average disposable income for urban dwellers is around $4,000 USD per year compared to just $1,300 USD for people in rural areas. Farmers still live a hand to mouth existence, raising just enough to eat but not enough to sell. Basic public services such as education, health care, and access to the internet are inadequate. Many rural families still live in wooden houses with outhouses and open hearths or charcoal grills for cooking. While some rural villagers now have televisions, DVD players, and refrigerators, there are areas that only have electrical power at night since rural industries use the limited power during the day. Landline phones are still rare though cell phones are becoming more common. I certainly don't regret being American. After the fall of Chu, my ancestors were peasant farmers for over 2,000 years! America offered us the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty and public education opened doors for social mobility that we just didn't have in the old country. What's interesting is that about 20 years ago, the Chinese government tried to entice many of us to return to China. They wanted us for our educational backgrounds as well as our U.S. dollars for local investments. To get us to return, they offered us the deed to our old family home. No one in my family (at least for those of us who were born and raised in this country) were interested in returning. Why would we abandon our careers (with the accompanying income these careers provided) to live in s crumbling old home (assuming this building is still standing) with hard packed dirt floors, no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and no access to the internet? There's also no local health care, the dirt roads are rutted, and it doesn't help at all that no one in my generation who is actually fluent in Chinese. I'm staying put in Nevada and my interest is largely academic as I continue to research architectural styles of the Warring States period while also delving into the military history of Chu as well as the Qin invaders. |
dBerczerk | 23 Jan 2020 6:37 a.m. PST |
Interesting commentary. Thank you for sharing with us! |
Come In Nighthawk | 26 Jan 2020 6:13 a.m. PST |
I'm very interested in your story! Am also currently interested (researching is too strong a word given paucity of sources) in the architecture of Shang era Bronze Age China. |
Erzherzog Johann | 26 Jan 2020 12:41 p.m. PST |
I'm also interested in learning more about the architecture of the earlier Chinese periods, especially the ordinary person's buildings – in my case for the Spring and Autumn Annals period (which is probably pretty similar to the Warring States period. I haven't found much good information. What I do know (because I've seen them in museums in China) is that they were already using the ubiquitous roof tiles. There are a lot of the tile end disks that survive. Cheers, John |
Masse de Decision | 26 Jan 2020 3:23 p.m. PST |
Glazed tiles were used on Chinese roofs as far as 5,000 years ago. According to Chinahighlights.com, "Roof architecture showed different levels of importance for buildings. Hip roofs were mainly used for imperial palaces; resting hill roofs were used for official buildings, hanging hill roofs for better-off premises, and hard hill roofs for civil buildings." "Roofs had to meet institutional requirements. For example, hip roofs could only be used for imperial palaces and temples during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and glazed semicircular tiles (usually yellow) were mainly used for imperial palaces and temples." I suspect that these roofing conventions date back to the Qin Dynasty because the under Emperor Qin, the Chinese government embraced the political tenets of legalism, which seems similar to Nazi Germany's national socialism. The Qin Empire was a totalitarian government in which it was thought that service to the state was the primary responsibility of all citizens. Under the Qin, a ranking system was implemented with the Emperor and his advisers at the top, political and military leaders in the middle, and peasants along with merchants relegated to the lowest social tiers. I find it interesting that under the Qin, subversive and dissenting views were prohibited. Just as the Nazis burned books, the Qin also burned entire libraries if the contents included literature, political, economic, or religious texts that were not consistent with the Imperial doctrine. This is probably why there isn't much material available on how other kingdoms during the Warring States period were organized and led. As the old adage goes, to the victor goes the spoils and the Qin rewrote history by eliminating the history of their rivals. I wouldn't be surprised if this is also why very little information exists about the Shang. The Qin government wouldn't have had much interest or even motivation for preserving the history of former non-Qin dynasties. Given such an ideology, I can easily believe that the Qin were the ones who first instituted restrictions on roofing styles and color. As for the peasants, you can't go wrong with thatched roofs. Tiles were a symbol of status and the size, color, and style was a statement about one's social ranking. Tiles also cost money and it would have been far more affordable for the peasantry to use thatched roofs to put over walls of mud brick. P.S. My ancestors would have ignored these conventions about tile. The area they fled to after the fall of Chu was well outside Qin's area of influence. It wasn't until the time of the Han Empire that China's borders were expanded to what they now are. |
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