Ginny, G1, Shenzhen College of International Education

Last week, a tragedy struck the Notre Dame Cathedral. A huge fire started and lasted for 14 hours which destroyed part of the cathedral and some of the antiques. However, I am not writing about Notre Dame.

I decide to get to know about some fireproofing methods used in ancient Chinese architecture and write about them. Ancient Chinese buildings were mostly made of wood, so water had become a vital part of fireproofing.

We seldom notice the use of many special things in Chinese constructions, but they do exist and are rather important to ancient Chinese buildings. First, in order to reduce the risk of a fire, the location of the building is crucial no matter if the construction is a mansion or merely a small house.

Most of them were located near the source of rivers or beside a lake. I believe we have all seen ponds or water tanks inside a Chinese mansion, right?

Those are not only for the beauty of the house. They are also the nearest and the most convenient source of water for putting out a fire. There is often a metal sphere on the top of the house between two stone dragons, and it is actually a lightning rod while most people think it is just an ornament.

Other than these “solid” ways of preventing a fire, ancient Chinese residents also came up with some means that had no real effects, but are intriguing to look at.

They were represented in the ways of decorations, the name of the room and colors.

Chinese characters with three drops of water as their radicals were often used to name the libraries of ancient Chinese houses, because the owners did not want the libraries to catch on fire.

Tiles of the houses were made into the shapes of fish scales. In addition, at the two sides of the roof ridge, animals such as fish and Chinese dragons are presented. These are creatures that live in the water, so ancient Chinese believed they could stop the fire.

Speaking of roofs, they were often painted black because that represents water in Chinese culture. Fire cannot burn if water is on top of it.

Chinese people always put their dreams on things like architecture. They may not work physically, but they gave people an assured feeling that their houses were fireproof.

I think these reflected the arts of ancient Chinese architecture and were rather useful to some extent!