Talk:Water town (China)

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Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou form a pyramid-shaped area called the "Venice of the East", which is also a city cluster with thousands of years of history and built around a complex canal system. These three areas are surrounded by rivers, lakes, and canals, forming many water towns. Here, locals and tourists still travel on hand-operated boats. Local captains usually sing traditional folk songs with local characteristics for tourists when they take a boat tour.

As the land is scarce and precious, the space inside and outside the house has been greatly utilized. Most of the residential buildings are adjacent to the water, so there is a small port outside each house. In ancient times, women's daily laundry, vegetable washing, rice washing, and other activities were all here, and boats that came and went could also be moored here. Compared with the waterways, the streets are very narrow, and some streets can only accommodate one person and one cow walking side by side.

Water Town Architecture

The residential buildings in China's water towns are most representative of Suzhou and Shaoxing. The rich water village has created a unique water village architecture. The walls around the house are tall and rough because most of the houses in the water village are taller two-story buildings. In addition, the houses in the water town are often connected with houses, and the firewall in the middle is for fire prevention considerations. The courtyard area is not large, and the tall buildings make the daylighting and ventilation openings in a house seem extraordinarily deep.

The humid climate of the water village makes the style of the street more important, so there is no more than 1 meter of the gap between the residential building and the wall. Generally, the larger water village houses will pass through the car hall, the living room, the main room to the inner room, or the back room from the gate, and there are flower halls, study rooms, bedrooms, and small gardens and stage on both sides. Two to three parallel axes will appear in large houses.

Regardless of the size of the building, the water village houses have a clear difference from other areas-that is, there are extremely many carvings and decorations. Color paintings rarely appear among them. White tiles are usually used for walls, and the wood is brown-black or brown-red. Compared with the splendid northern houses, it looks very elegant.

In ancient times, the craftsmen of the water town were very good at using the changeable topography, and in their designs, there would be flowing water between the houses. Throughout the planning of the water town, the waterways and streets are scattered among the houses in an irregular network, forming the unique characteristics of the houses in the water town.

LISAAAAAXIAO (talk) 10:01, 1 November 2020 (UTC)