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The Chinese Domestic Architectural Heating System [Kang]: Origins, Applications and Techniques

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Qinghua Guo
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Extract

In northern China, heating is represented by kang. The kang is a living and sleeping platform, a heated bed. It is constructed of brick, adobe or stone and consists of three parts: a fireplace, a kang proper and a chimney. Beneath the flat surface of the kang are flues, which conduct hot air from the fireplace through to the room. The kang allows energy to be conserved; its surface temperature of about 40 degrees C can largely be maintained overnight. It is used as a bed at night; bedding is laid out for sleeping but is put away in the morning. During the day it provides a large warm platform upon which people undertake many household activities. The kang usually occupies from one-third to one-half of the area of a room; but the entire floor of a room can be constructed and heated in this manner, in which case it is called dikang, literally a heated floor (di meaning floor). The heated bed and the heated floor are technically similar, but each developed in conjunction with a distinctive way of life, either sitting on the floor or sitting on furniture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 45 , 2002 , pp. 32 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2002

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References

Notes

1 These heating practices have persisted over large parts of northern Eurasia. Manchuria was a vast area. Through four Sino-Russia Treaties, made between 1689 and 1860, the north-east part of the territory became Russian domain.

2 In the whole world, there are two highly developed heating systems, the Chinese in the East and the Roman in the West. The former is still in use today, and the latter disappeared long time ago. It is unknown whether there was any connexion between the two systems, since the Silk Road between China and Rome has received only cursory study.

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40 Gudul is an old word, lacking any written form in Chinese characters.

41 When the Qing ruler moved the government to Beijing in 1644, Shenyang retained a special status as an auxiliary capital, and its palace received eleven visits from the emperors.