Page 108 - JCAU-5-4

Journal of Chinese

Architecture and Urbanism

BOOK REVIEW
What we are studying when we are studying

home: A book review of Home Beyond the House

Lingege Long*
School of Art and Design, Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, Beijing, China
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Reshaping Rural China)

Abstract

Home Beyond the House takes Yanxia, a village of Han nationality in the Zhejiang
province in southern China as an example, and explores the relationship between
the local sociocultural factors and vernacular built environment in rural China,
examining how its cultural traditions influence the physical, psychological, and
social construction of home for people living in the rural area, to illustrate the home’s
cultural connotations. Meanwhile, it offers solutions for sustainable development
of the built environment, cultural diversity, and social life in rural China under
globalization and modernization processes. China is undergoing rapid social
transformation, and many aspects of rural society are changing drastically. Home
Beyond the House may provide a worthy reference viewpoint on how to grasp and
understand the trajectory of change and the future direction of rural China from the
architectural perspective.
*Corresponding author:
Lingege Long
(longlin@tntlab.cn) Keywords: Rural China; Home; Sociocultural; Family relationship; Tradition
Citation: Long, L. (2023). What we
are studying when we are studying
home: A book review of Home
Beyond the House. Journal of
Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, Home Beyond the House: Transformation of Life, Place, and Tradition in Rural China. By
5(4): 0925. Wei Zhao. Taylor & Francis. 2022, 327 pp. ISBN 9781032280158
https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0925
Received: May 8, 2023 1. Introduction
Accepted: June 12, 2023
Agriculture is the bedrock of China’s social development, and the importance of
Published Online: August 10, 2023 the countryside to China cannot be overstated. Modernization is not yet complete
Copyright: © 2023 Author(s). for China’s current development, and its drastic changes are shaking and impacting
This is an open-access article the foundation of rural development. With the dynamic evolution of the overall
distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution- development of the countryside and the new contradictions arising from the integration
Non-Commercial 4.0 International of urban and rural areas, the complexity and uncertainty of the countryside have
(CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all gradually emerged as a fundamental issue that directly constrains the modernization
non-commercial use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, of China (Zhang et al., 2014), and the construction of the countryside has become the
provided the original work is main theme of China’s urbanization process (Wang & Ding, 2010). What does rural
properly cited. society consist of? What is the key to rural society? How to construct the countryside
Publisher’s Note: AccScience during the transition? Thinking about and answering these questions will help us
Publishing remains neutral with understand Chinese rural society and its transformation. Home Beyond the House
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional provides a worthy perspective to comprehend and grasp the changes and future
affiliations. direction of rural China.

Volume 5 Issue 4 (2023) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/jcau.0925