Heterogeneous Culture In Religious Architecture

Architecture reflect culture, which can be seen heterogeneous culture's past and current situation. This thesis takes Xi'an Dayan Pagoda and Xi'an Wuxing Street Church as examples to analyze the heterogeneous culture that they contain. In China's history, ancient Buddhism and modern Christianity are different culture. During the process of spreading in China, the stupa changed style became pagoda. Xi'an Dayan Pagoda has many stories, odd number of levels and underground palace, and the imperial scholars had their name inscribed on the pagoda every year, which showed the Indian Buddhism blended into Chinese culture and became one part of Chinese culture. Christian architecture in China kept their original style. Xi'an Wuxing Street Church indicates the spreading of Christian Culture are not successful and excluded in China.Buddhism spread to China at a proper time, and during the spreading it attached to Chinese traditional culture. Christian culture influenced China a lot in modern times, but because Western imperialist countries used military forces to spread Christianity, which were strongly rejected in China and didn't fuse into Chinese culture.We are under the background of culture input in contemporary society, and we can get enlightenment from the past on how to deal with the relationship between different culture. Culture is developing all the time, so we can not adopt a closed-door policy. Multiculturalism is historical necessity, Chinese culture should be open and keep its own features, only in this way Chinese culture will reshape its glory.