China Has No Castles, Or Is It?
When you find images of oriental castles, these castles are probably not in China, as if China has no castles. If you use the common standard, ancient China did not build castles. But certainly, there are defensive structures in China, the word "堡"(castle) exists for a reason.
Why Chinese didn't build castles? Are there any castles in China? What would be a castle(堡) in Chinese culture?
In this article, we will explore the castles in China, or according to Western standards, a lack of them.
This is Antlerium PotatoNews, a series focusing on the daily lives of ordinary people, including culture customs. Today we explore why China has no castles.
What do we usually count as a castle?
To answer why China has no castles, we need to identify what is a castle at first.
A castle is a structure, ONE structure(not a building complex), that is built for housing royalty or nobility, and designed to be as highly defensive as a fortress.
If that is not one structure, but a building complex, it would be a palace. If that is not housing important people, it would be a fortress. If that is not highly defensive, it would be a villa.
Why China has no castles?
China is a unified country for most of its time. For a country that has achieved absolutism as far as the Qin dynasty (221 BC - 207 BC), building castles for the past millennia does not make sense.
Who will build castles if emperors always choose to live in a palace? Nobility in ancient China is weak. They can't own a force so why would they build castles?
Ture, in some periods China broke into warring states and divided, but these fractions still leaned on absolutism governance, and the leader of a fraction would claim he was an emperor and therefore, still chose to live in a palace.
Actually, this logic can also explain why Japan has castles.
Emperors of Japan failed to consolidate their power, allowing the nobility to form their militias. And when the class of samurai rose and the age of the Shogunate started, different areas in Japan succumbed to the ruling of Daimyo, hereditary land holders that owned militias made of samurai. Daimyos built castles since they had status and they really had a military to guard them.
Japan has lots of castles while China has no castles, in a way it shows how political landscape affect the preference of castle building. China is too centralized for castles.
What would the Chinese regard as castles?
In ancient China, a fort would be called "堡", and a fort nearby the Great Wall would be called "城堡".
Although the Chinese term "城堡" is used to translate "castle", the concept of castles in China is different to the West, specifically the residents.
It is no secret that Chinese society cares about family. To protect against bandits and clan wars, people in the hilly south will build fortified residences like castles.
It is weird to say castles are for commoners. While China has no castles for the high class, China has castles for clans.
Do you know who also wants to protect themselves? Religious groups. Buddhists love to avoid political skirmishes, they sometimes will build castle-like structures to guard their petite land.
And when you twist the meaning of castle with such context... BANG! China has a lot of castles.
So, does China have no castle? Not exactly
In conclusion, saying that "China has no castles" does not make sense. In the country's long history, the Chinese developed different forms of defensive structures, castle certainly is one of them.
However, for imperial families, living in a castle doesn't make sense. They have palaces. For the nobles, living in a castle also doesn't make sense. They can't own any militaries.
Chinese "castle" is a walled barrack similar to Roman barracks. And when you want to find the more complex, the more Mediaeval-vibe structures, you can only find them among the commoners, but they cannot be counted as feudal castles.
This is why China has no castles. To learn more about culture customs or other topics related to our ordinary life, make sure to follow PotatoNews. We will also post some cliffsnotes on our socials, make sure to follow them.
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