Inside the home

Furniture is 家具 jiājù. 家 jiā is the house; 具 jù is what you prepare and set out (its ancient forms show two hands holding a vessel) ⟶ the utensil. So furniture is, literally, “the utensils of the house”. The same 具 turns up in 工具 gōngjù, the tool, and in 餐具 cānjù, tableware, which will have its turn when we come to the table. Walls, rooms and keys are on our page Housing. Here, we step inside.

For a very long time, the Chinese sat on the floor: kneeling on a mat, 席 xí, in front of a low table, 几 jī or 案 àn. The chair arrived late, and from the north. Under the Han, the peoples of the steppes brought the 胡床 húchuáng, literally “the barbarian bed”, which is in fact a folding stool. It was not until the Song that the high table and the chair really settled into people’s homes. Incidentally, 椅子 yǐzi was first written 倚子, with 倚 yǐ, to lean back: the chair is the seat that has a back.

The language, for its part, has kept the mat. 出席 chūxí, “to go onto the mat” ⟶ to attend a meeting; 主席 zhǔxí, “the main mat” ⟶ the chairman. And the 几 in 茶几 chájī, the coffee table in the living room, is indeed the one in 窗明几净 chuāng míng jī jìng, “bright windows, clean tables”.

The sentence that closes our examples comes from that period. Chapter 10 of the Analects describes the manners of Confucius, and there we read 席不正，不坐: “He would not sit on a mat that was not placed according to the rules” (from Couvreur’s French translation, on our page Chapter 10 of the Analects of Confucius). It would be wrong to see in it the fussiness of an old man who is too particular. But you need to know that the position and direction of the mat showed each person’s rank. The word has also kept this sense of an assigned place in 席位 xíwèi, a seat in parliament or at a banquet.

In a traditional house, the main room, 堂屋 tángwū, is arranged around the back wall. On it hangs the 中堂 zhōngtáng, a large painting or a piece of calligraphy, between two parallel couplets. In front stands a 八仙桌 bāxiānzhuō, the square “Eight Immortals” table, which seats eight guests, two to a side, and on either side of it, two 太师椅 tàishīyǐ. The name of this armchair is said to come from 秦桧 Qín Huì, grand tutor (太师) under the Song, for whom a headrest was supposedly added to his seat. The anecdote comes from a collection of notes of the period, and I don’t know what it’s worth: the armchairs that go by that name today look mostly like those of the Qing.

In the North, the house revolved around the 炕 kàng, a brick bed heated from below, often by the flue of the kitchen stove. The whole family slept on it, ate on it at a little table set on top, and received the neighbours there. Further south, no kang (and no central heating either, as we saw with housing), but a 凉席 liángxí, a cool mat for summer nights, and a 蚊帐 wénzhàng, the mosquito net.

The kitchen has its own god, the god of the hearth, 灶王爷 Zàowángyé. He spends the year above the stove, 灶 zào, and goes up to heaven on the day of 小年 xiǎonián to report on the family; he is offered sticky sweets so that he only says sweet things (see our page Festivals). The stove has left some very lively expressions. 另起炉灶 lìng qǐ lúzào, “set up another stove” ⟶ start from scratch. 开小灶 kāi xiǎozào, “open a small stove”: in collective canteens, this was the separate kitchen reserved for cadres; today, it means special treatment, and in particular the private lesson a teacher gives one pupil. Its opposite is 大锅饭 dàguōfàn, “rice from the big pot”, where everyone gets the same share, whether they have worked or not. As for 背锅 bēiguō, “carry the pot on your back” ⟶ carry the can, it is the short form of 背黑锅 bēi hēiguō, “carry the black pot”. Why black? I haven’t found any explanation that holds up.

In the bathroom, a Chinese flat often comes as a surprise: no bathtub, a shower with no cubicle and a drain in the middle of the floor, the 地漏 dìlòu, because the whole room gets wet. A renovated bathroom therefore boasts of its 干湿分离 gānshī fēnlí, the separation between dry and wet areas. The word 马桶 mǎtǒng has a curious history. Under the Han, the chamber pot was called 虎子 hǔzi, “the little tiger”; the Tang, who could no longer write the name of 李虎 Lǐ Hǔ, ancestor of the imperial family, supposedly renamed it 马子 mǎzi, “the little horse”. That is the explanation you read everywhere, but it looks rather too good to be true.

Idioms have kept even older furniture. 东床快婿 dōngchuáng kuàixù, “the son-in-law of the eastern bed”, goes back to 王羲之 Wáng Xīzhī, the most famous of Chinese calligraphers (see our page History of Chinese Art from the Wei and Jin Dynasties). The minister 郗鉴 Xī Jiàn was looking for a son-in-law in the Wang family; all the young men stood up very straight in front of his envoy, except one, lying on the bed on the east side, belly bare, nibbling a flatbread. He was the one the minister chose. And 坐第一把交椅 zuò dìyī bǎ jiāoyǐ, “to occupy the first folding armchair”, comes from the 交椅 jiāoyǐ, heir to the barbarians’ stool: in 水浒传 Shuǐhǔ zhuàn, Water Margin, the outlaws of Mount Liang rank themselves by armchairs.

Today, in a modern flat, the main wall of the living room usually carries the television, on a 电视墙 diànshìqiáng decorated with as much care as the 中堂 once was. Same wall, different god.

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.