Living Heritage: Chinese traditional architectural craftsmanship for timber-framed structures

Tight as a thread, seamless as a seal, and coupled like yin and yang. For centuries,sunmao structures have been providing sturdy and durable supports for Chinese wooden architecture. Large components of traditional Chinese wooden architecture, including columns, beams, purlins and dougong, are often pieced together using sunmao structures. Craftsmen can make and process the components in advance and assemble them quickly on site, which is simple and efficient The Hemudu site in Yuyao, East China's Zhejiang province, dates back around 7,000 years.Hundreds of wooden components with sunmao structures have been unearthed from the remains of stilted houses there, the earliest known application of sunmaostructuresin China in wooden-frame buildings. For the craftsmen who have preserved and guarded this heritage, and for the generations of people who have lived in and among the spaces defined by it across China, wood and wooden structureshave always been an important constituent of Chinese architecture.