The Tibetan Plateau, with an average elevation of 4,000 meters, has long been known as the Roof of the World, where the weather is cold, rainfall is limited, natural conditions are rather harsh, and there are not many forests but plenty of stone.

Among Tibet's buildings, the achievement of Tibetan Buddhist buildings is the highest. In the seventh century, the Tubo Tsampo Kingdom emerged on the Tibetan Plateau. Along with the development of Tibet's relationship with the inland areas and Southeast Asia, Buddhism was introduced from India and the central plains.

The two wives of TSongsang Gampo, king of Tubo Tsampo, namely, Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty (entered Tibet in 641) and Princess Chizun of Nepal, both worshipped Buddhism. Organized personally by Princess Wencheng, the Reshazu Lakang, the first Buddhist structure in Tibet, built in Luoxie (present-day Lhasa), is the predecessor of the still existing Gtsug-Khang Monastery. In the year 762, Khri-sron-btsan, king of Tubo Tsampo built Tibet's first formal temple, Bsam-yas Monastery, and seven Tibetan youths were tonsured to become monks.

Before Buddhism was introduced into China, Tibet had already had a primitive religion, Bon, which was later blended with Buddhism. In addition, due to the strong influence of Tantrism of Indian Buddhism and elements of Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism developed a very strong mystical color obviously different from Buddhism in the inland areas. In Tibetan Buddhism, commonly called Lamaism, the temple is called a Lama temple, and the pagoda is called a Lama pagoda.

Beginning from the Yuan Dynasty, Tibet was formally included into Chinese territory WC can say that there is no other place in China like Tibet, wherein religion stands above all else, where life is full of a strong religious flavor and culture contains a strong theological atmosphere. Tibetan Buddhism was introduced into the Mongolian region in the Yuan Dynasty and was gradually widely accepted by the Mongolian people. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the emperors also built some Lama temples and Lama Pagodas in Beijing and north China in order to unite the Tibetan and Mongolian nationalities.

Tibetan Buddhist monasteries can be classified into three kinds-Tibetan, mixed Tibetan/Han, and Han types. The Tibetan-type Buddhist monastery almost prevails all over Tibet and its neighboring provinces. The Tibetan-Han mixed type based mainly on the Tibetan-type monasteries is found mostly in Inner Mongolia. There are also a small number of Han-type monasteries. The Lama temples in Beijing, Chengde and Wutai Mountains are mostly of a Han type or Tibetan/Han mixed type based mainly on Han style.

Tibetan-type Lama temples can also be divided into those built on level ground and those set up at the foot of mountains, with the latter accounting for the greater part. Flatland temples are often of a semi-regulated and symmetrical form, with the image of the main big hall as the composition center being most outstanding. A free-style layout is used for temples at the foot of mountain areas, which lacks both an overall axis and a pre-determined plan, although they still follow some rules for arrangement. For example, most temples lean against slopes in the north and face flatlands in the south. At the back of the terrace are arranged tall colorful scripture halls and Buddhist halls, and in its outer part are mansions for Living Buddhas. The further Outer part is encircled by a large stretch of low small yards in which ordinary monks are living. A large temple was often gradually completed over several decades of development.

Zuglakang Monastery in Lhasa

Zuglakang Monastery in Lhasa is a representative of temples built on flatlands. The monast6ry began construction in the seventh century, with extensions over the centuries, and it is preserved to this day.

The gate of the monastery faces west and is close to Barkor Street which encircles Zuglakang Monastery. Everyday, believers make a clockwise circular perambulation to show respect for the Buddha.

Walking through a doorway with a porch, across a thousand-Buddha verandah, one finds the Johkang Hall, the main hall of the Zuglakang Monastery. Johkang Hall is in a plane, square shape, with four layers on all sides, partitioned into small Buddhist halls. The Buddhist hall on the axis houses the statue of Sakyamuni brought by Princess Wencheng, In another Buddhist hall, there are the statues of Srong-brtsan-sgam-po, Princess Wencheng and Princess Chizun from Nepal. The center is a large space leading up to three floors with a flat top. There is a gilded copper roof on the middle of each of the four sides of the fourth floor. Its figure is modeled after the structure of the Han nationality, and there is a truncated turret on each of the four corners.

Outside the front gate of the monastery is a small encircled yard inside which there is a willow tree said to have been planted by Princess Wencheng, as well as the Fanhui League Monument of the Tang Dynasty and a monument designed to persuade people to accept vaccination.

The gate of the Zuglakang Monastery, the Thousand-Buddha Verandah and the Johkang Hall, plus the small encircled yard, seem to play the role of a screen wall, and together constitute an axial symmetric space series. The encircled yard and the concave temple gate form a small square in front of the monastery, which is the starting-point of the series. The Thousand-Buddha Verandah is wide and spacious, while the Johkang Hall is closed and inhibited, providing a stark contrast. The golden roof of the Johkang Hall is full of distinguishing features: short eaves are arranged surrounding the top of the entire square outer wall to bind up the whole hall, and extend outward from the four golden-top halls that create a multi-eaved effect. Additionally, with the set-off of the turret, the image is particularly rich and beautiful.

Sha-lu Monastery

Sha-lu Monastery in the southeast of Xigaze was first built in 1087during the Song Dynasty. Sha-lu means tender leaf, perhaps containing the meaning of the rejuvenation of Buddhism. The original monastery was destroyed by earthquake, but was rebuilt at the end of the 1athcentury during the Yuan Dynasty.

In the center of the ground floor is the main hall Sha-lu La-kang. It is a square, large scripture hall, the flat-top of the center part protruding. Light streams in through the skylight between the high and low flat-tops. This layout was later called the "Du-khang method", and was commonly used by the Ming and Qing dynasties. The left, right and back sides of the scripture hall are closely encircled by several Buddhist halls, and a ring of winding corridors are added to the outer side. Monks can take a right-hand walk and chant scripture in the corridor.

The second floor is a siheyuan (courtyard with houses on all sides)encircled by four purely Han-style halls. According to ancient Tibetan documents, when the Sha-lu Lakang was built, many skilled Han craftsmen were invited, therefore forming an early Tibetan/Han mixed style.

In the early 15th century (early Ming Dynasty), the eminent monk TSongkhapa from Qinghai introduced religious reform in Tibet and created the Gelug-pa or Yellow Hat sect It eventually gained the upper hand not only in religion, but also in politics. He constructed six famous major temples of the Yellow Hats, which are also the largest temples of Tibetan Buddhism, Such as the Lhasa Ganden Monastery (14O9), Bras-spungs Monastery (1416), Sara Monastery (1419), Tashilungpo in Xigaze (1447), Tar Monastery in HuangZhong of Qinghai (156O), and Blabrang Monastery in Xiahe of Gansu (1709). They were all built at the foot of mountains, represented by Blabrang Monastery

Blabrang Monastery

Blabrang Monastery is located in an oval basin elongated east and west, with a river on the southern fringe. Main buildings are arranged at the foot of Beishan Mountain. Tall buildings were constructed near the foot of hill at the center of the whole monastery, such as scripture hall, Buddhist halls and Living Buddha mansions. Small yards with residences for ordinary monks occupy the largest area, crowded on the three sides east, south and west. The outermost part is a Buddhist wheel-turning corridor with 50O-odd rooms encircling the monastery on three sides. The monastery is dotted with streets and lanes, resembling a small town.

Blabrang Monastery is centered on the largest Wensi Institute. The Wensi Institute is arranged along the vertical axis from the front to the back from front gate, front courtyard, scripture hail with verandah and towering back-hall close to the scripture hall.

Arranged inside the scripture hall are square grid columns, dense beams and flat-top. Like Sha-lu Monastery, the flat-top in the center rises up. All the back wall contains Buddhist niches. There are scripture cabinets near the back part of the left and right walls; other walls are covered with murals. The floors, columns and flat-tops are all covered with fabrics, tangka (a kind of silk scroll drawn with Buddhist portrait), while sutra streamers hang down everywhere. The space is low, deep and wide, and the atmosphere is heavy; the weak butter oil lamp glitters in the golden ritual implement, giving of f a mystical color climbing the flight of stairs at the back wall of the scripture hall, one can enter the back hall. This is partitioned into several rooms erected respectively with Buddhist statues, stupa where the remains of Living Buddhas of all ages are buried and the Dharmapala god with a ferocious image. The hall is not deep, but is very high. The front wall protrudes above the truncated roof of the scripture hall. The tall windows are open, but the light only reaches the head and chest of the Buddhist statue, adding to the mystical atmosphere.

On the flat-top of the scripture hall, the second floor is on the height stretching along the left, right and front edges; facing inward are corridors or rooms. The sides of the scripture hall rise gradually from the front to the back, with a strong kinetic potential and rhythm and an extroverted character.

The Buddhist hall is second only to the scripture hall, and is often built on the elevation of the slope, making it appear more imposing. Gild roof small halls of the Han style are often built on the top floor.

In its heyday, there were 30 mansions for Living Buddhas in the Blabrang Monastery, but now only about a dozen or so remain. These are two-or three-storied plane rectangular buildings with a truncated roof. The Surface of the outer walls is generally painted red, and only the walls of mansions for eminent monks are painted yellow.

The Potala Palace

In Tibet, there was a kind of government structure called "Zong shan". "Zong" means a local Tibetan administrative unit, equivalent to a county in interior areas. The government center of a "Zong" was mostly constructed on the hill, thus becoming a castle called "Zong shan". Lhasa's Potala Palace, the greatest building in Tibet, is both the highest "Zong shan" and the temple of the gods of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Potala Palace, built on the Potala Hill, is an extremely magnificent castle, the only example in ancient China and a masterpiece rare even in world architectural history. In outward appearance, it consists of 13 stories 117 meters high, and covers an area of 100,000 square meters. Work to construct the Potala Palace began in the second year (1645) of the rule of Qing Emperor Shizu, around the time when the fifth Dalai Lama went to Beijing to have an audience with him. It took 50 years to complete.

The outer walls of the central part of the Potala Palace are painted red, earning it the name of the Red Palace. Inside, is the stupa hall containing stupa for the Dalai Lamas of all ages, as well as Buddhist halls. The east and west of the Red Palace are linked to the east and west White Palaces. The east White Palace held the living area of the Dalai Lamas, while the west White Palace provided monks' living rooms. Extending forward from the lower part of the Red Palace is a white terrace linking the East and West White Palaces, inside which are various warehouses.

The Red Palace is the highest and the largest. In the middle, there is a concave balcony belt running through the upper and lower parts, along with many gilded copper-tile roofed small halls on the flat-top, which enrich the composition of the whole palace and naturally become the composition center commanding the whole situation. A dark brown wall belt runs horizontally on the upper end of the whole palace, making the outline of the structure more distinct, echoing the Red Palace in color. Below the dark brown wall belt of the Red Palace is a white wall belt echoing the wall surface of the White Palace. The structure is in tacit agreement with the chevron. The middle part of the front edge, set back a bit along with the hill, is the highest point of the structure right at the peak of the hill. The outer wall is inlaid with stones, its surface clearly inclined and appearing natural and steady. All these are close to the composition texture of natural hill stones. There is no distinct demarcation between the footing of the structures and the hill, man's work and nature being in harmony and tacit agreement.

Two rows of blank windows are added to the stone walls in the lower part, under which there is a 20-meter-high wall Surface that exaggerates the height of the structure. On the dark brown wall belt there are many gilded copper plates. The chin-chuang, golden treasure bottles, and golden lotus on top of the wall extend into the sky and, together with the gilded roof, glow with charming radiance under the foil of the blue sky, white clouds and snow-clad mountain. From the bottom up, the way of treatment moves from coarse to fine, from simple to complex, from solid to charming and from monotonous to rich; the color goes from plain to colorful. Together, this naturally diverts people's sight line to the heights, making the structure more lofty and imposing.

The majestic, brilliant, magnificent and uninhibited Potala Palace stirs the hearts of the people. It has a strong artistic appeal and is an architectural art treasure that can be shown off to the world.

Xili Tu-Zhao in Hohhot
The Tibetan-Han mixed Lamaist temples in Inner Mongolia are mostly built on flatland which can be represented by the Xili Tu-Zhao in Hohhot. Xili Tu-Zhao was built at the end of the 16th century (latter part of the Ming Dynasty), it was expanded in the 27th year (1688) of Qing Emperor ShengZu.

Its general plane is fully of a Han style, seating north and facing south. Multiple courtyards are arranged in accordance with the symmetrical axial style, and arranged from the front to the back are archways and temple doors. Inside the gate are east and west bell and drum towers, and Han-styled Buddhist halls and large scripture halls. In the southeast, in front of the large scripture hall is a Lamaist pagoda, adding much luster to the front courtyard. With regard to single structures, except for the large scripture hall which serves as the heart of the whole temple and is of a Tibetan/Han mixed style and the Lamaist pagoda of Tibetan style, all other structures are of a pure Han style.

The pillars and decorated brackets in the seven porticos on the ground floor of the front elevation of the big scripture hall are all Tibetan type. The overhanging short eaves on the portico support the balustrade on the upper floor. Porticos are reduced to five on the upper floor, while the two ends each have one portico changed to brick walls, thus enriching composition. The five porticos in the middle are wooden and support the eaves.

There are not many overhanging eaves. An additional parapet wall is laid up on the eaves, its style being identical with the short eaves on the lower floor. The protruding golden dharmacakra (wheel of the law) in the center of the parapet wall, dual deer and chin-chuang retain many Tibetan styles. The brick blank walls on both sides of the portico are stuck with peacock blue glazed wall tiles. Tile eaves are used to divide the wall into three sections, the lower section simple, the upper complicated. (Fig.8-4)
The roof of the big scripture hall does not use Tibetan-style flat-top; instead, three Han-style Chinese-hip-and gable roofs are strung together from the front to the back, covered by yellow glazed tiles. Together with the bright-colored portico, they present a warm and strong atmosphere, illuminating people with bright colors.

Chengde monasteries

From the Ming Dynasty to the Kangxi and Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty marked the third climax of the development of Chinese architectural art history. One of the achievements of the Qing Dynasty was that many large-scale Lamaist structures were built in interior areas. The Chengde monasteries near the Chengde Summer Villa are the most important work.

Chengde monasteries are located on the east and north sides of the Summer Villa. Actually, there are 12 monasteries, which started construction from the 52nd year (1713) of Emperor Shengzu and took 70 years to complete. Eight remain well-preserved. Puning Monastery, Pule Monastery, Putuo Zongcheng Temple and the Sumerian Fushou Temple are the greatest and most important ones, all being of the Tibetan/Han mixed style. Comparatively speaking, Puning and Pule temples contain more components of the Han style, while the Putuo Zongcheng and Sumerian Fushou have distinct Tibetan features.

Puning Monastery was built in the 20th year (1775) of Emperor Gaozong. A clear axial line runs through the north and south. The front part is a typical north China Han-style Buddhist temple, belonging to a palatial structure and consisting of screen wall, archgates, temple door, stone-tablet pavilion, bell and drum towers, Heavenly King Palace, east and west wing halls and Mahavira (Hall of the Great Hero). The terrain at the back is steep with an elevation of nearly 1O meters. On the tableland is the main structure, the Mahayana tower with more Tibetan architectural features.

The Mahayana Tower consists of four floors, basically in the Han style, but the roof is modeled on Tibet's Bsam-yas Monastery. A pavilion is built on each of the four corners, and a big pavilion and a big pavilion tower is located in the multi-eave at the center, symbolizing Mt. Sumeru at the center of the universe. The space height of the tower is 24 meters, containing a huge thousand-hand, thousand-eye Avalokitesvara. The 14 platforms and halls of various sizes around the tower represent the sun and moon appearing and disappearing around Mt. Sumeru, and the four large buzhou and eight small buzhou. There is a Lamaist pagoda on each of the four corners colored white, black, red and green, representing the "four-intelligence" or four heavenly kings. Wavy walls enclose the structures, while at the back is the Vajra Dalun Weishan Hill. The whole group of structures symbolize the so-called "Mandala Graph", introduced from India to Tibet, forming a novel style rarely seen in the Han (Chinese) homeland.

Putuo Zongcheng Temple in the north of Chengde Villa was built in the a2nd year (1767) of Emperor Gaozong, and is modeled on the Potala Palace, but with the addition of many Han architectural techniques. The terrain of the whole temple is low in the front and high at the back, with a big drop. The total plane can be divided into three parts-front, middle and back. The front part retains the axial symmetrical layout method of the Han-style structure. Along the axis are tower-shaped temple doors while huge stone-tablet pavilions on a platform stand parallel to the five pagoda doors of five Lama Pagodas. There are also glazed memorial archways. The area in the middle part is the largest. On the slope are scattered more than 1o small -'white platforms" and Lamaist Pagodas, modeled after the structures in front of Potala Palace. On the elevation of the rear slope is the main body of the temple, also modeled after the Potala Palace, composed of a red plat form at the center and white platforms on the left and right. Several gilded Han-styled roofs emempon top of the platform. These platforms are actually outer square yards encircling flat-top buildings. Inside the red platform there are numerous square, heavy-eaved polygonal roofed dharmas in one hall, while inside the east and west white platforms are stages and a thousand-Buddha tower respectively.

Of course, the "large red platform" of Putuo Zongcheng Temple lags far behind in comparison with real Potala Palace.

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