Researches On The Correlation Between Water And The Space Of The Villages And Towns In West Hunan

There are numbers of well-preserved ancient houses in West Hunan autonomous prefecture where great mountains and rivers gathered. Shen Congwen, a famous literati once described "the mountains stretch one after another; a river meanders for far; as if they were embracing each other", which properly represented the landforms here. Under the joint impact of Lishui River, Youshui River, Wushui River and Chenxi River, which flows into Yuanshui River finally, West Hunan district exhibits unique spatial space and architectural form with geographical characteristics. Therefore, this paper attempts to orient the study on the relevant characteristics of the spatial space in the villages and towns in West Hunan district.Ever since the Chinese myth in ancient time, people believed that water area comes into form before earth. "Guanzi, on water and earth", one of the most outstanding monographs in pre-Qin dynasty even said that people cannot live without water, which is the origin of everything on earth. We are by no means the geographic determinist, however, the ancient viewpoint has truly demonstrated that human beings cannot exist and live without water. Ernst Cassirer, a famous German philosopher ever said that people always depends upon the natural environment around. The abundant water resource in West Hunan district determines its close relationship with the villages and towns here.Firstly, most of the ancient villages and towns in West Hunan originated from water areas. The distribution map of the water and the villages and towns has shown the fact that great water must company important towns. In ancient time, land transportation was not so convenient and water transportation played the major part. Thus, convenient water transportation was rather necessary for the promotion of handicraft industry and processing industry. Therefore, important towns emerged by great rivers. Focusing our attention on individual towns, most of the towns contain lakes and have rivers flowing through. Even the towns that have been moved to the top of mountains for defense, there ought to be some springs and wells. No matter we consider water as transportation, as barrier, or as instrument, it undoubtedly makes human life and production possible.According to the Chinese tradition, we would like to locate the residence with mountain at the front and water at the back. Here, water is static and dynamic, open and enclosed; it is also introducing as well as defending, just in different ways of representing. As for the greatest factor on the selection of location, the names of historical places demonstrate most. Most of the towns' names are related to water overtly or covertly: some names were directly based on the water and its shape, such as Qingjiang River village and Longxi Lake; some were named with water area covertly and then changed after the age of reforming and opening-up, which are relatively hard to verify. One of the typical examples is the Changchun village near Liye town. It was originally named "Changtan Jieshang", in which "Changtan" refers to the small river flowing through and dividing the village into two parts, and "Jieshang" means the major part of the village while the other side of the river named "He dui men".There's a Tujia folk proverb goes like that without water to the east, the house shall not be built. Therefore, with certain water areas existing, the over-water towns and "diaojiaolou", a unique architectural form in West Hunan emerged. The particular characteristics of the architectures in West Hunan Tujia-Miao Autonomous Prefecture closely connected with the hydrological environment around. Water area influences the structure and form of the ancient houses in various ways. And meanwhile, the distribution and building orientation of the architectures are mysteriously related with water. Superficially the houses are arranged at random. However, the fact is, beside the influences of the water area as the original factor, the arrangement and the building orientation of each house are based on some mysterious principles such as geomantic omen. Even some of the houses are positioned in accordance with the situation of water as well as divinatory symbols. Different distance from water also influences the architectural form.The villages and towns in West Hunan positions near water with the houses stand interdependently. Between and among the houses, there are plenty of gray spaces that take water as main elements, which provide plentiful communication spaces for the habitants. For instance, people may do washing and chatting around a well; adopt water, do irrigation and have fun from a clear spring; sing antiphonally and meet friends or lovers at the bridges along a river... With water being the media, people communicate with each other, entertaining while working and realize harmoniousness. The spatial space formed with water and architectures integrate into various aspects of people's life, and make indelible influence on human activities and daily life.When the basic living conditions in these towns are satisfied, the water-related constructions are more necessary for the daily life and production. Opening well for drinking, constructing bridges for crossing river, constructing ferry for transportation, digging channel for irrigation and making water stone roller for processing ... all constructions and instruments that to overcome difficulties of water and at the same time make use of water form the specialized space. All these constructions and instruments exist essentially on the meaning of water.Water in West Hunan is a dynamic process. Water is changing all the time along with the geographical conditions, which has forced the ancient villages to adjust and reconstruct correspondingly. Besides the nature factors, the society also changes. For instance, the transportation in ancient time was mainly depended on water, which determined that most of the well-developed districts were located near the dock or beside river. Along with the social development, landway transportation becomes more and more important. Thus, the location of well-developed districts changed. The most significant influence was human migration. For example, in order to construct the large hydropower projects, the ancient villages ought to be moved. All these changes are more or less related to water.Due to the intimate relationship with water, a unique culture of water has been formed in West Hunan. It is no exaggeration to say that water is significantly connected with the cultural vein of this district, among which the culture of "Youshui" being the most important. Different cultures are distinguished by water that Tujia minority culture being at the north side of Youshui River while Miao minority culture at the south side. Generally speaking, it is the water that has brought up the architectural water culture in West Hunan.