Housing

To live somewhere is 住 zhù. On the left, the man, 亻; on the right, 主 zhǔ, which gives the sound. The ancient forms of 主 draw the flame of a lamp, and some people also read in it the idea of staying put: the man who stops somewhere ⟶ to dwell. It is a pretty explanation, but I have nothing to prove it. The home itself is 房子 fángzi. In 房, the radical 户 hù represents a door with a single leaf, whereas 门 mén has two (the traditional form 門 shows it even better). As for 家 jiā, the roof and the pig, it already has its place on our page Family and relatives. Here, we deal with the walls.

Traditional houses change a great deal with the climate. In Beijing, it is the 四合院 sìhéyuàn, literally “the courtyard closed on all four sides” ⟶ four wings facing an inner courtyard, at the end of the 胡同 hútòng, the alleys (see our page Beijing city). On the Loess Plateau, people dig into the hillside: the 窑洞 yáodòng is cool in summer and mild in winter. The Hakka of Fujian built 土楼 tǔlóu, “earth buildings” ⟶ huge round fortresses where a whole clan lived; in the south-west, you find 吊脚楼 diàojiǎolóu, “buildings with hanging feet”, in other words on stilts.

In town, on the other hand, people most often live in a 小区 xiǎoqū, literally “small district” ⟶ a closed group of apartment blocks, with its gates, its 保安 bǎo'ān at the entrance and its management company, the 物业 wùyè. Each block is divided into 单元 dānyuán, entrances, so that an address looks like a set of coordinates: 5号楼2单元1301, building 5, entrance 2, flat 1301, in other words door 1 on the thirteenth floor. The floors, by the way, are counted as in American English: 一楼 yī lóu, “the first floor”, is the ground floor, and what the British call the first floor is a 二楼 èr lóu.

Another surprise for a European: a new flat is often sold as a 毛坯房 máopīfáng, a “raw home” ⟶ bare concrete, with no floor covering and no kitchen. The buyer takes care of the work himself, the 装修 zhuāngxiū, which takes months (and the neighbours get to enjoy the drill, at the hours the compound allows). Conversely, a rental ad will happily promise 拎包入住 līnbāo rùzhù, literally “come in carrying your bag” ⟶ everything is ready, all you have to do is put down your suitcases.

On the rental side, you deal with a 房东 fángdōng, the landlord, often through a 中介 zhōngjiè, and the formula 押一付三 yā yī fù sān sums up the terms: one month’s deposit, three months’ rent in advance. The 包租婆 bāozūpó, literally “the woman who rents out the whole lot” ⟶ the landlady who sublets, owes her fame to Stephen Chow’s film Kung Fu Hustle (2004), in which she rules, curlers in her hair and a cigarette between her lips, over a wretched tenement.

Housing is also a source of worry. Someone paying off a 房贷 fángdài that is too heavy calls himself a 房奴 fángnú, a “housing slave”. A 学区房 xuéqūfáng, located in the catchment area of a good school, costs a fortune per square metre, because a child’s enrolment depends on the address. As for 蜗居 wōjū, “the snail’s shell”, the word was already used, out of modesty, for one’s own house; a 2009 television series made it the symbol of badly housed young city dwellers.

There is also a heating border. North of a line that roughly follows the Qinling Mountains and the Huai River, buildings have 暖气 nuǎnqì, central heating, which the city switches on and off on fixed dates; to the south, nothing, even though it sometimes freezes there. Southerners like to say that they are colder at home in winter than the people of Harbin. I can well believe it.

Houses have left their mark on the language. In the old residence, the 堂 táng, the reception hall, opened onto the courtyard, and the 室 shì, the inner room, lay behind it. Of a disciple who was still a little rough, Confucius says that he has “climbed into the hall, but not yet entered the inner room”, hence 登堂入室 dēng táng rù shì, to reach mastery. Couvreur, in his French translation, writes “the temple of wisdom” and “the sanctuary” (see our page Chapter 11 of the Analects of Confucius): the meaning is there, but the house has disappeared.

The sentence that closes our examples comes from another chapter. Confucius is thinking of going to live among the barbarians of the East; someone objects that they are coarse. He replies: “If a wise man dwells among them, what coarseness could they still have?” (our page Chapter 9 of the Analects of Confucius). Under the Tang, the poet 刘禹锡 Liú Yǔxī drew from it his 陋室铭 Lòushì míng, the “Inscription for a humble dwelling”, which ends precisely on these words. In Liu Yuxi, 陋 describes the dwelling; in Couvreur, it is the people who are coarse. Classical Chinese leaves both readings open.

The internet, finally, has taken up the image. On a Chinese forum, the author of the first post is the 楼主 lóuzhǔ, “the owner of the building”, and each reply adds a floor: people talk about the second or the third floor of the thread. To each their own floor.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order is shown stroke by stroke, with the arrow that gives the direction of the movement.