The bungalow has a stone foundation and no ring beams. The walls are red brick and there are no pillars or anything else. There is an upper ring beam. Does the upper ring beam have no effect?

House style

Before liberation, the layout of houses in various places in Shijiazhuang was based on the "siheyuan" as the highest pursuit. People generally take the north room facing south as the main room (north main room), and there are also side rooms (east and west rooms) and south room, forming a square courtyard. The main room and the wing rooms can be formed into separate buildings, or they can be integrated into the north-east, north-west, or north-west rooms. The rooms can also be connected through corridors. Judging from the style of the house, it can be mainly divided into:

Bungalow

This is the most common and ordinary rural house. It is shaped like a square box with the front gable roof protruding from the outside. Two or three-inch blue bricks or rafters protruding about one foot support the roof and form an eave. In the 1970s, people often used cement rafters made by themselves, and in the 1980s they preferred to use small cement boards. Instead of the original wooden rafters, the number of rooms in a bungalow varies from place to place, usually three, four or five. In terms of the layout of the room, the three rooms have a main room door, and from the main room, there are smaller doors to the rooms on both sides. This is commonly known as the "curtain room". If there are four rooms, usually two doors are opened, one for the main room, forming three "curtain rooms", and one for the suite (penthouse), forming a separate house. When there are five rooms, usually there are three doors, one for the main room, and one for each of the two suites. At least two doors are required, one for the main room, and one for each of the two suites. Generally every room has a window, sometimes suites can be uneasy.

Qianyanfang

It is also called Xiajiafang, Xiazi, Baoxia, etc. The main difference from the bungalow is that in addition to the gable wall on the sunny side, two more purlins are added in width, which are supported by several pillars to form an independent open corridor. The top and base of the corridor are the same whole as the original house. , can prevent summer rainwater from entering the doors and windows, and some items can also be piled on the summer table in front of the window. The requirements for the number of rooms for a canopy house and a bungalow are the same. Only the direction of opening the door changes. You can build three houses with side eaves and open a door in the middle; you can also build two houses with side eaves, and the remaining one is built flush with the terrace, so that the rooms in the east end face each other in the west. If you open the door on the stage, you will open the door to the east. A four-room house can be built with side eaves, and the door opening method is the same as for a three-room house; it can also be built with four rooms with side eaves, with one door each for the main room and the suite. A five-room house is usually built with three bays with open eaves. The middle door opens into a curtain house. The two ends are built flush with the terrace, and the east and west ends face each other with open doors. This is called "bird's nest leading eaves". The purlins of the eaves room are supported by exposed pillars, and the number of exposed pillars is the same as the number of beams. In the early 1980s, people connected small cement beams with the large (circle) beams inside the house and extended them over the front eaves, called "overhead beams", thus eliminating the need for bright columns. Cement boards are usually placed on the eaves of the cantilevered beams, which is relatively simple and easy to implement.

Tile roofs

Mainly for the roofs of bungalows and houses with eaves. If it has a tiled roof, it is collectively called a tiled house. Tile houses generally have green tiles laid in a ridge shape to quickly drain rainwater. Because the cost of building tile-roofed houses is high, ordinary people build fewer buildings, and they are generally built by large government officials.

Buildings

refers to houses with two floors and more than two floors. Historically, Shijiazhuang did not build many buildings anywhere. The main reason was that the cost was too high and ordinary people could not afford to build them. Only a small number of wealthy landlords built some buildings. After the 1980s, the number of ordinary buildings in Shijiazhuang has increased day by day, and the momentum remains unabated to this day.

Cave dwellings

Refer to the arch-shaped houses in the western mountains. There are two ways to form cave dwellings: the excavation type, in which early people dug holes directly into the mountains to build houses; and the built-in type, in which people built cave dwellings on the hillside with artificial stones and mortar on the top. The internal structure of cave dwellings is also divided into two types: straight (tube) type, each cave dwelling is independent, with a single door and single window; reworked cave dwellings refer to the cave dwellings that are fully or partially interconnected, just like the plain curtain houses. Excavated cave dwellings are now basically extinct, while built-on cave dwellings are still very common. In the past, the walls above the doors and windows of cave dwellings were all round-shaped, but around the 1980s they were mostly changed to half-shaped. Later, except for the front hilltop of the cave dwelling, which was round, the doors and windows were basically changed to square shapes.

Since the 1990s, a large number of bungalows have been built in the western mountainous areas, and the styles and materials are no different from those in the plains.

In the history of Shijiazhuang, if a family did not build a courtyard, they usually built the east room first and then the west room. If only one wing is built, then the east wing is built but not the west wing. In the past, people believed that the east wing was for boys and the west wing was for girls. If a choice had to be made, more boys would be chosen. This shows the preference of boys over girls in ancient times. In terms of the proportion of each room, the north main room is the highest, the east wing room must be two inches lower than the north main room, and the west wing room must be two inches lower than the east wing room. The old ethical ideas of elders being superior to the younger and men being superior to women are reflected in this architectural format.

In some villages in mountainous areas, the distance between the east and west wing rooms and the north main room should not be less than five feet.

In the past, some large households had two or even three entrances to the quadrangle. In this case, the main room of the middle house had to be reserved as a hall or the central position should be reserved to build a gatehouse. Doors and other gatehouses or halls are all double doors that allow straight entry. If the gatehouse is very heavy, it cannot go straight in. If you enter and exit from the north and south, you must make a thin wall with wooden boards on the opposite side of the gatehouse to block the front, and square one or both sides from the side. Pass; or open the Sunda Gate and enter and exit from the east-west direction. If you only build the front of the gatehouse and do not care which direction you enter or exit from, you must build a screen wall opposite the gatehouse. Ordinary families sometimes divide their yards into two because their yards are too large. Usually, they build a wall in the center of the yard, and a gate or gate is built in the middle of the wall.

If you dig a well in your own yard, its location should be on the east side of the center line of the yard. Legend has it that it is the land of the dragon and has sufficient water sources. The southwest corner of the yard is where the pig pen is built, but the height of the pen shed cannot be high. If it is too high, it will be detrimental to the family; most people's pigsty is a "toilet pen", with two toilets in one pigsty, one in the northwest corner of the pigsty, and one in the southeast corner of the pigsty, but the toilets The door usually opens outside the courtyard wall facing the street. It is a men's toilet or a public toilet for passers-by. It is basically open-air. In mountainous areas, the pig pens are built outside the courtyard, and cannot be built as "connected hay pens" (the toilets are independent), because people think that is unhygienic. Since there is no room to build toilets in quadrangle and triple courtyards, they can only be built in appropriate places outside the courtyard.

Most of the gates of the Beizhengfang courtyard are opened in the southeast corner of the courtyard. This is the Xundi of Bafeng, so it is customarily called Xunmen. The position of the gates of some mountainous houses is determined by placing a compass. In the past, due to limited economic conditions, the "gate" at the door of ordinary people's homes was just a "fence". The usual fence was made of wooden sticks first, and then straw, kudzu needles, branches and other objects were pinned on or Nail it on the frame, put one end on or tie it to the fixed stake on the inside, and turn it on and off sooner or later. Most homes have screen walls of different qualities. A few wealthy families are very particular about their doors. They need to build a high gate tower and install a wooden door at the door, which is strong and beautiful.

After liberation, especially after the 1970s, with the general improvement of economic levels and the gradual increase in the number of houses, many small families lived separately from their elders soon after they were established. This has made people There is no need to add auxiliary rooms and build a courtyard in a small courtyard, so many families only build the east wing and reserve the southernmost room as the main entrance. By drawing, pasting the wall and installing iron and wooden gates, the gates are simple, practical and economical. Although there are fewer side rooms in the house now, the area of ​​the main house has doubled, and the quality and height of the courtyard walls are also improving. Many courtyard walls are already as high as the gables of the main house. There is still a custom of building gatehouses in mountainous areas, but not many gatehouses are built on the plains now. However, the scale and quality of both the gatehouse and the door opening are much higher. It is extremely common to apply ceramic tiles or ceramic tile murals. Most of them also have tile lintel couplets and various types of tiles such as "Ziqi Donglai" and "Happy House". Tile couplets. In order to pass tractors and other vehicles, most gates are built relatively wide, which makes the current gates very beautiful and elegant.