Culture resting on Chinese gate piers

A Chinese nursery rhyme goes something like this, “A little crying boy, sitting on the gate pier, eagerly wants a bride…”

The Chinese gate pier in question is the embodiment of culture, embracing the memory of old Beijing, of quadrangles and of many Beijingers’ childhood.

The gate pier, a projecting feature of quadrangles, is the outer part ofmen zhen shi(bearing stone of a door in traditional Chinese folk house) which supports the doorframe and the door spindle.

Though the priority of a door is to keep the house safe, in ancient China, to decorate it was an important way to show the house owners’ social status, which contributed to the diversified gate pier culture.

Usually made of bluestone, most gate piers in Beijing are 85 cm in width at the maximum and 25 cm in height at a minimum.

Among various construction styles, the mainstream of gate piers was the drum-shaped and the box-shaped. The former, as its name, is designed as a drum in shape, featuring rich cultural metaphors. The latter, a cuboid, has three sides outside the door with simple but propitious reliefs.

History of Chinese Gate Piers

Men zhen shi is believed to be the origin of the gate pier and can be traced to ancient architecture during the Han Dynasty (206B.C.-220A.D.). The development of gate piers was greatly boosted by the construction of ancient Chinese capitals, such as the Middle Capital of Liao Dynasty (960-1127) and Dadu of Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).

The golden age of gate piers was the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasties (1644-1911), during which the governments made plans for urban construction and advocated the self-built courtyard.

Officials of different ranks constructed mansions while common citizens built houses of various sizes. As time rolled on, gate piers not only served as a part of the door, they also indicate the social rank of the house owner as well as his personal cultivation.

The earliest surviving gate piers in Beijing located in front of the Altar of the Earth and Harvests in the Sun Yat-sen Park, which is said to be the heritage of Sui (581-618) and Tang (618-907) Dynasties.

Diversified Gate Piers

Gate piers in Beijing can be classified into six types according to the house owners’ stations: gate piers of royal families, of military and civilian officials, of wealthy families, of literary families, of shops and of average families.

Lion-shaped majestic gate piers were exclusive to royal families, which were made of marble. Military and civilian families laid drum-shaped gate piers in front of their doors, and in these gate piers were some designs engraved to show their official ranks.

Similarly, drum-shaped gate piers were also used by wealthy families, in which, differently, auspicious designs were carved. Adapted into bookcases, box-shaped gate piers were also the choice of lettered families, implying the owners’ great knowledge.

Drum-shaped Gate Piers