Researching The Characteristics And Cultures Of Taoist Architectures In Yunnan

Taoism is a religion that was born in Chinese ground; it sources from the Chinese ancient people's original worship. The architectures in Taoist temples are almost like receptacles to hold this religion and contain deep-going thoughts of Taoists and Taoism. Its development has been through many different historical periods, sometimes being prosperous or sometimes decline, but it always carries the main vein of doctrine in Chinese traditional culture. Yunnan province is located in the southwest of China; there are several of cultures in it, which inextricably contact with the spirit and doctrines of Taoism about history, thought and others. It provided fertile ground for the Taoist culture communication and temples construction. The Taoist temples in Yunnan set their painting, calligraphy, sculpture, inscriptions, couplets, plaque, gardening and a variety of other art forms together, which have wealth of artistic content and strong regional characters. The temples are also the important content of studying of Chinese Taoist architectures and culture.Through accessing relational information and mapping personally, paper compositely researched the now existing and typical Taoist architectures in Yunnan province with the theories of architecture, landscape environment, Chinese traditional construction, even with the views of religion, sociology, cling, geography and many other sciences. Beginning with researching the origin of Taoism and Taoist architectures, it generalized the history of the Taoist architectures in Yunnan, and systematically analyzed each faction of them. By classifying to the Taoist immortal system in detail, it summarized the order of each type of Taoist temples and their characters. According to the original ideas of Taoist temples and the thought of Taoist immortal, paper systematically analyzed the distribution, factors of selecting address, layout of the forms, dealing with space,technical construction, art and other fields of Taoist temple architectures in Yunnan, discovered the their national and local features, finally acknowledged and gotten them. Such as:1. Paper analyzed the origins of Taoist thought, and demonstrated two types of "divine worship" to lead to the emergence of Taoist buildings. The article has traced the emergence and development of history about Taoist architectures, discussed the history about Yunnan Taoist architectures through the Han Dynasty, Southern and Northern Dynasty, Sui Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty, and Yuan, Ming, Qing dynasties, and summarized the characters of it. The article also listed the each group of Taoism systematically which were brought to Yunnnan Area and their temple architectures.2. Paper reviewed the origins, content and features of Taoist immortals systems, and discussed the special Taoist culture performance characters that the Immortal thoughts combined with the ethnic and religious cultures, geographical folk culture and Buddhism, Confucianism and other cultures, when were introduced into Yunnan. According to the order of Taoist immortals system, paper sorted out the type of Taoist temples in Yunnan Province and came to result such as "the creation of God" respected type, " Constellation" respected type, "Immortal" respected type, "mountains and rivers of God" respected type, "vulgar God" respected and other types. For example with the field mapped temples, it has explained the characteristics of architectural shapes and structures, even any potential relationship between the gods culture and architectural forms of Taoist temples.3. The Article divided the area of Taoist temples in Yunnan. With concrete examples in them, it analyzed a variety of subjective, objective and comprehensive factors about their addresses Selected, and discussed about the whole layout of the forms and spatial structure, which included such as courtyard type, gossip type and scattered type, even in-depth introduced the processed special spaces of temples such as the entrance, garden, altar sets and others. The paper also made analysis and comparison to the plane features, wooden structure techniques, symbolism, decorations and arts of the main and affiliated architectures of Yunnan local Taoist temples which consist of Palaces, Storied building, gates, pavilions, terraces and many other types of single traditional buildings. It Reflected the negative situations about forms and Technology of Yunnan Taoist architectures, while full of diversify characters about nationality and location, became the regional, folk, compatibility and originality Yunnan Taoist architectures.4. By thinking about the worth of development and protection about Taoist temples in Yunnan Province, paper also supplied the valuable principles and measures about the protection and maintenance of Yunnan ancient religious architectures, provided the new view of re-use of Taoist temples building in Yunnan, and consumed useful suggestions and reference for how to use them more larger and better in the new age.