Chinese Architecture: A History by Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt (review)

Nancy Steinhardt’s Chinese Architecture: A History is a sweeping survey of monumental architecture, tombs, and city plans from the Neolithic period through the twentieth century. Among her largely chronological arrangement of chapters, the author also includes useful supplementary sections on Yingzao fashi 營造法式 (a Song-dynasty building treatise), houses, and gardens. A splendidly illustrated quarto-sized tome, Chinese Architecture stands in a certain tradition of attempted comprehensiveness in English-language books on the subject, which includes Laurence G. Liu’s 1989 publication and the 2002 multiauthored volume Steinhardt edited.¹ This book, however, supersedes its predecessors in its comprehensiveness and singular approachability. This scope is in large part due to the work being a culmination of Steinhardt’s four decades of engagement with the subject matter and to her intentional structuring of the book based on her evolving teaching of the subject over the years, as she mentions in her preface.

Steinhardt’s overarching chronological arrangement makes sense for a comprehensive survey. Yet hidden within this structure are some unexpected features that reflect the author’s expertise. Each chapter starts with an introduction, which frames its central concerns, and ends with a succinct paragraph that relates what has preceded to a particular timespan in China’s history. Chapters 1–3 discuss architectural evidence of the Neolithic through the Spring and Autumn periods, next the Warring States and the Qin, and then the Han dynasty. These chapters reveal not only the author’s mastery of the archaeological evidence but also a special attention to tomb architecture. Her attention to these sometimes-neglected tombs continues throughout the book into the late imperial period. The tomb sections, which are always indicated by separate subheadings within the text, help put tomb artifacts into a spatial context and make the book particularly useful to anyone teaching survey courses on Chinese art. By chapter 3, one of the book’s distinct strengths—the inclusion of wonderful photographs (taken mostly by the author) of (sometimes rarely illustrated) structures—becomes apparent. Upon turning to page 48, I delighted in seeing the mortuary shrine of Guo Ju 郭巨, a Han-dynasty building that is still standing in Shandong today, of which I had no previous knowledge. The author’s inclusion of such places, found in her many years of visiting historic sites, is one of the constant joys that the text brings.

Illustrations and examinations of key standing monuments multiply as the text proceeds in chapters 4–8. Steinhardt takes two chapters to unpack the built environment during the politically complex period between 220 and 581. Her extensive treatment contrasts with most surveys of Chinese art and architecture, which tend to spend a chapter at most on the era. Chapter 5 particularly reveals Steinhardt’s approach to the permeability of borders, as monuments from polities such as Korea’s Koguryŏ kingdom are brought into dialogue with those from more mainstream Chinese traditions. Chapter 6 succinctly but powerfully invokes the developments during the Sui and Tang dynasties. Chapter 7 is the most thorough treatment of the handful of remaining structures from the period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms that I have encountered. Chapter 8 focuses on the Liao and Western Xia kingdoms, once again including ethnicities other than the Han in discussing the broader significance and development of the building tradition.

Chapter 9, entitled “The Chinese Building Standards,” deserves attention. Taking Yingzao fashi as its launching point, this chapter unpacks the rules and regulations of official architectural production spelled out in the Song-dynasty architectural treatise. Steinhardt’s explanation manages to distill the principles of the classical Chinese timber-frame construction into a form digestible enough for upper-level undergraduates. Students often find the highly technical subject daunting, so this chapter is a major contribution.

Chapter 10, on the religious and tomb architecture of the Song and Jin 金, resumes Steinhardt’s procession through major dynastic monuments. Chapter 11 elaborates on the city-building strategies from the Liao and Song through the Jin...