Folk houses with their own characteristics

The most representative Tibetan folk house is the diaofang. Bunkers are mostly stone and wood structures, with dignified and steady appearance and simple and rough style; The outer wall shrinks upward, and if it is built on a mountain, the inner slope is still vertical. Bunkers are generally divided into upper and lower floors, and the number of rooms is calculated by columns. The bottom floor is a barn and a storage room, and the floor height is low; The second floor is the residential floor, and the large suite, bedroom, kitchen and small room are storage rooms or stairwells. If there is a third floor, it will be used as a lecture hall and terrace.

The bunker has the characteristics of firmness, tight structure and neat corners, which is not only beneficial to wind and cold protection, but also convenient to prevent the enemy from stealing.

Tents are very different from bunkers, which are a special architectural form adopted by Tibetans in pastoral areas to adapt to the mobile lifestyle of living on weeds. Ordinary financial offices are generally short, square or rectangular in plane, supported by wooden sticks, and the frame is about 2 meters high; Laying black yak carpet, leaving gaps about 15 cm wide and 1.5 m long for ventilation and lighting; Pull it left and right with yak rope and fix it on the ground; Around the inside of the tent, a low wall with a height of about 50 cm is built with grass mud blocks, adobe or pebbles, and highland barley, ghee bags and dried cow dung (for fuel) are piled on it. The tent is simply furnished, with a fire stove in the middle and a Buddha statue behind it, and the ground around it is covered with sheepskin for sitting, lying and resting. The tent has the characteristics of simple structure, easy support, flexible disassembly and easy relocation.

Tibetans are a nation that loves beauty and is good at expressing beauty, so they are also very particular about the decoration of their homes. People usually draw auspicious patterns on the indoor walls and blue, green and red ribbons on the interior walls of the living room to symbolize the blue sky, land and sea. The houses in Shigatse are painted with auspicious clouds of the sun, the moon, the wind and the horse, while the houses in Mangkang, Qamdo, try their best to render the external walls, doors and windows, with colorful decorations and extraordinary momentum.

The strong religious color is the most obvious sign that Tibetan dwellings are different from other ethnic dwellings.

The indoor and outdoor furnishings of the houses show the lofty status of the gods and buddhas. Whether it is the residence of farmers and herdsmen or the upper mansion of the nobility, there are facilities for offering Buddha. The simplest one also set up a confession of worshipping bodhisattva.

Decoration with religious significance is the most prominent symbol of Tibetan folk houses. Red, blue and white striped curtains are hung under the eaves picked out from the exterior doors and windows, and the surrounding window covers are black. The skirting line of the roof parapet and its corner are "buildings" composed of red, white, blue, yellow and green stripes. In the Tibetan religious color view, these five colors are fire, cloud, sky, earth and water to express auspicious wishes.

There are also wall decorations showing Tibetan Buddhist factions. For example, the walls of houses in Sakya are painted with white stripes, and the stripes are painted with khaki and dark blue-gray ribbons of the same width, and the hollow is white. In the right corner of the main building or courtyard wall and the wider wall, excellent stripes of khaki and white are also painted from top to bottom to mark the region's belief in Sakya.

The most representative settlement mode in Tibet is religious settlement. The formation and development of religious settlements have added charm to Tibetan folk houses. For example, the residential group of Barkhor Street in Lhasa is developed around Jokhang Temple and is a typical representative of religious settlements in cities and towns. The formation of residential settlements in agricultural and pastoral areas is centered on temples, freely arranged and dispersed, forming an unrelated pattern.

Tibetan dwellings not only pay attention to cold, wind and earthquake prevention, but also use methods such as opening air doors, setting patios and skylights to better solve the influence of unfavorable natural environment factors such as climate and geography on production and life, and achieve the effect of ventilation and heating.

1959 before the democratic reform, most residents in Tibet lived in low shacks, and the homeless poor could only live under the eaves and along the road. After the founding of Xizang Autonomous Region, the government invested a lot of money to improve residents' housing. By 1994, the per capita housing area in urban areas reached 12.24 square meters, and that in rural areas was 20.36 square meters. Due to the slow economic development in old Tibet, building materials were limited to stones and clay. Nowadays, people's houses make full use of all kinds of modern building materials, and many high-rise buildings have been built, which makes the Tibetan architectural style play a better role. Most people in old Tibet had extremely poor indoor facilities. Now, televisions, tape recorders and complete sets of Tibetan furniture have entered ordinary Tibetan families. China people's reform and opening up has made Tibetan residents have more money, and they have decorated their houses beautifully and distinctively.