A Dai bamboo house is a type of stilt building primarily constructed of
bamboo
Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, bu ...
as the traditional form of housing for
Dai people
The Dai people ( Burmese: ရှမ်းလူမျိုး; khb, ᨴᩱ/ᨴᩱ᩠ᨿ; lo, ໄຕ; th, ไท; shn, တႆး, ; , ; ) refers to several Tai-speaking ethnic groups living in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and t ...
. The lower floor was about seven or eight feet high.
Horses
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...
and
oxen
An ox ( : oxen, ), also known as a bullock (in BrE
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer spec ...
were hitched to the posts. There was a
terrace
Terrace may refer to:
Landforms and construction
* Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river
* Terrace, a street suffix
* Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk a ...
near the upper stairs, which turned into a large long room. The rest of the house was a largely open space with a low roof, sloping on both sides, with eaves to the floor and, generally, no windows. If the eaves were slightly higher, there were small windows on both sides and a door on the back. In the middle of the building was a fireplace, burning day and night. The roof was covered with
thatch
Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...
and the doors and windows are made of bamboo. The construction is easy. It only took a few days to cut down bamboo and gather neighbors together to build it. These houses are perishable and had to be repaired each year after the
rainy season
The rainy season is the time of year when most of a region's average annual rainfall occurs.
Rainy Season may also refer to:
* ''Rainy Season'' (short story), a 1989 short horror story by Stephen King
* "Rainy Season", a 2018 song by Monni
* ''T ...
. This construction method was conducive to
damp roof, and drainage of rain suitable for topography of the
PingBa area.
Most Dai live in the Pingba region. Abundant rainfall with an annual average temperature of 21 °C makes a very suitable environment for building bamboo structures. Bamboo buildings are easy to set up, and are breathable and cool to avoid
miasma, dampness and flooding, while resisting earthquakes and preventing insects and snakes from entering.
Description
The floor of the bamboo building is square, and above the ground floor. The main floor forms the ceiling of the ground floor without walls, which is used for raising livestock and piling up
debris
Debris (, ) is rubble, wreckage, ruins, litter and discarded garbage/refuse/trash, scattered remains of something destroyed, or, as in geology, large rock fragments left by a melting glacier, etc. Depending on context, ''debris'' can refer to ...
. The main floor has a bedroom and a main room with a fire pond with a place to cook tea. The main room is used for family reunions, while outside, there is an open front
porch
A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...
and a
balcony
A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor.
Types
The traditional Maltese balcony is ...
. The bright and airy front porch is the place where the host works, eats, rests and receives guests during the day. The sunny porch includes a water jar to wash one's hands and face, and is a convenient location for drying clothes and crops. This corridor is an indispensable part of the bamboo building. Annual rainfall often causes flooding, but the open ground floor and many gaps of bamboo sticks surrounding the main floor are very conducive to the passage of flood water.
Dai people believe in
Buddhism
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...
and have many superstitious taboos. Almost every village has a
Buddhist temple
A Buddhist temple or Buddhist monastery is the place of worship for Buddhists, the followers of Buddhism. They include the structures called vihara, chaitya, stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions and languages. Temples in Buddhism represen ...
. It is traditionally stipulated that houses shall be built on the opposite and side of the Buddhist temple, and the floor of the houses shall be no higher than the platform on which the
Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism.
According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...
sits in the Buddhist temple. Stone and tile may be discouraged in housing construction, and there is a length limit on the wooden support pillars. Carved decorations and six lattice doors are forbidden. Homes cannot have a third enclosed room on the main floor, and stairs must be built as a single length without intervening platforms. This uniformity is intended to prevent housing size, quality or elevation from reflecting
economic disparity
There are wide varieties of economic inequality, most notably income inequality measured using the distribution of income (the amount of money people are paid) and wealth inequality measured using the distribution of wealth (the amount of we ...
among the people in the village. These restrictions have affected the technical development of residential buildings, making it impossible for a large number of residential buildings to support a long life.
Detail
![Tools and utensils in the in the Yunnan Nationalities Museum - DSC03606](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Tools_and_utensils_in_the_in_the_Yunnan_Nationalities_Museum_-_DSC03606.JPG)
The Dai people often live in large bamboo houses built on the wet ground in the
rainforest
Rainforests are characterized by a closed and continuous tree canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforest can be classified as tropical rainforest or temperate rainfores ...
area. There are chickens and pigs under the house, and there is a fenced garden around the house. A typical house is 10 by 10 meters high, 2 to 3 meters above the ground, supported by wood and bamboo, the walls and floors are woven with bamboo, and the roof is a sloping
thatched roof
Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (''Cladium mariscus''), rushes, heather, or palm branches, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof. Since the bulk of ...
supported by bamboo poles. The house is usually divided into an inner bedroom and an outer living room with a fireplace for the kitchen. Those who can afford it are covered with floors and tiled roofs.
The traditional residence of the Dai people has a
spire
A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...
and a second-floor
balcony
A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor.
Types
The traditional Maltese balcony is ...
. Many Dai people now build houses with bricks and concrete. Some Dai houses have been influenced by the
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
. They are built around a
courtyard
A courtyard or court is a circumscribed area, often surrounded by a building or complex, that is open to the sky.
Courtyards are common elements in both Western and Eastern building patterns and have been used by both ancient and contemporary ...
, only one meter above the ground, with mud-brick walls, thatched roofs, or tiled roofs.
The entire structure of a traditional Dai bamboo building is made of bamboo bundling. The walls are made of bamboo sticks (thin pieces of bamboo), while the roof is covered with straw clamped by bamboo sticks. The bamboo building is very light.
![Dai village](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Dai_village.jpg)
Dai people live in a flat
river valley
A valley is an elongated low area often running between hills or mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers or streams over ...
. When it rains heavily, the open network of pillars at the building's base allow water to flow quickly underneath the structure. Even if the river rises, bamboo sticks tied to girders can be removed to cut the buoyancy of the house to prevent it from being washed away. When the river recedes, bamboo sticks can be tied up again without affecting the structure or use. Houses like these, built on stilts, are called columnar structures and are more than 10,000 years old.
Most bamboo buildings now use
hardwood
Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...
for column beams and local materials built into the next two floors of the small building. On the ground floor only the pillars supporting the house can be used to raise livestock and pile up
sundries. The upper floor is the space where people live, and can be divided into a porch, hall, bedroom, and balcony. This kind of building does not have a courtyard. Though it covers a small area, usable space abounds. The cost of local materials is low and the building is permeable, in line with the local
climate
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...
and
topography
Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps.
Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...
.
Types
The traditional bamboo house can be divided into three types—Payasangtudi, Mahasati and Henmen. In the past, the Dai bamboo house was divided into two types: the official bamboo house and the civilian bamboo house.
The officer’s bamboo house is spacious and bright. It adopts the style of Western “
gothic architecture
Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It e ...
”, the shape of the house is square, and the roof is shaped like a
pyramid
A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...
. The entire bamboo house is supported by 20 to 24 huge wooden stakes, which are built on stone. The internal shape is simple. The main room in the middle is the guest room. The living room is usually divided into two or three rooms for the owner's wife and children. The room of the officer's bamboo house is about 30 square meters and can accommodate about 20 people. Compared with the official bamboo house, the bamboo house of the people is quite narrow. The roof is covered with couch grass. The wooden pile cannot be built on stone, and figures cannot be carved on the wooden pile.
Development
In the process of bamboo house development, Dai people used their talents to constantly improve their structure and materials. For example, they have learnt to place large marbles under the pillars of the house so they do not touch the ground. This prevents moisture from climbing up the pillars, thus protecting the bamboo house from decay. To make bamboo houses more durable, the Dai people have also created many bamboo and wood
treatment methods. To dissolve some soluble substances such as
xylose
Xylose ( grc, ξύλον, , "wood") is a sugar first isolated from wood, and named for it. Xylose is classified as a monosaccharide of the aldopentose type, which means that it contains five carbon atoms and includes an aldehyde functional gro ...
, bamboo must be saturated for months in a river or pond, spoiling the starch so it does not attract moths or parasites. Wood that must be buried underground is first burnt to make the ground harder and to give it a layer of protection.
Disadvantages
Bamboo houses are vulnerable to fire. Each community sets its own rules. In the daytime of the
dry season
The dry season is a yearly period of low rainfall, especially in the tropics. The weather in the tropics is dominated by the tropical rain belt, which moves from the northern to the southern tropics and back over the course of the year. The te ...
, no one is allowed to use fire; if a fire must be used, the user must go to a designated site. Bamboo houses are very rare. The house is filled with smoke and its chemical properties help it resist erosion and moths.
Dai villages
The Dai people usually live in villages of about 40 households. There are as many as 100 households in the big village. These villages are usually built on rivers or creeks and usually feature tall
eucalyptus
''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as euca ...
trees and exquisite
Buddhist temples
A Buddhist temple or Buddhist monastery is the place of worship for Buddhists, the followers of Buddhism. They include the structures called vihara, chaitya, stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions and languages. Temples in Buddhism represent ...
or
pagodas
A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...
.
Inheritance
Dai bamboo building is usually a single building, suitable for small family life. That is because Dai people follow the
system of inheritance of the youngest son, which means that the older children must live independently from their parents.
References
{{reflist
Bamboo buildings and structures
Dai people
Stilt houses
Houses in China