Research Of Technical And Construction On Pre-Modern Catholic Church In Shanxi Province

The western Catholic Church have a long missionary history, dating back to the late Ming and early Qing Dynasty in the 17th century. These hundreds of years have witnessed the collision and fusion of European religious culture and local tradition. The construction of church in Shanxi by European missionaries has developed through three major phases:(1) entirely adopting Chinese traditional architecture; (2) integrated into Shanxi vernacular building system; and finally (3) developing european style churches with Shanxi's characteristics in modern times. To date, numerous Catholic churches have been preserved in Shanxi, which not only offer abundant references for the study on the evolution of western churches in the province, but also provide detailed and accurate data for architectural study on the localization of western architecture in mainland China.The objects of study in this article are extant Shanxi Catholic churches of modern times. Firstly, by collecting and referring to relevant materials on both Chinese and Western traditional concepts of construction, the author has adopted various methodologies, like Architectural Semiotics, Typology and Psychology, to explore the source of construction concepts and technology. Secondly, the influential factors and restrictions of building churches in Shanxi has been analyzed under the historical background of modern China. A lot of field studies have been carried out on that basis. According to diverse local environments and demands of Church mission in different parts of modern Shanxi, the author has inductively analyzed and categorized extant examples from perspectives of building structure and technology. At last, this paper not only records the worrying preservation of modern Catholic church, but also proposed several factors leading to the destruction of authenticity in historical architecture.Western architectures were not localized in a day. Local churches in Shanxi would possess more characteristics of Chinese traditional architecture, due to the limitations and restrictions confronted by the Catholic Church to missionize and build churches in Shanxi, a hinterland area with limited influence exerted by advanced western industrial culture in modern times. Extant vernacular modern churches have provided precious cases about how differential construction technology would comprise and develop between two cultures.