Ancient Sites (Hardcover)

Ancient Sites is a collection of scholarly essays on ancient Chinese architecture by Luo Zhewen, an architectural historian and pioneer of Great Wall studies. It is the sixth volume in Zhonghua Book Company's Elegant Writings Collection, published in July 2016 as a cloth-bound hardcover with four-color printing. Running to roughly 150,000 characters, the book gathers essays from the author's decades of fieldwork and research on ancient Chinese architecture, covering the Great Wall, ancient pagodas, bridges, and pavilions, as well as such sites in Beijing as the Bell and Drum Towers, Beihai and Tuancheng, and the Imperial Archives. The essays offer both a systematic account of the Great Wall's historical evolution, function, structure, and construction methods and on-site records of famous passes including Shanhaiguan, the Yuntai at Juyongguan, Badaling, and Jiayuguan; they also provide accessible introductions to the types and evolution of Chinese pagodas, bridges, and pavilions. Having long participated in major conservation and restoration projects for the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Potala Palace, the author grounds most of the text in personal surveys and engineering practice, making it rigorous yet approachable. The book includes more than fifty of the author's hand-drawn architectural sketches and his own photographs of ancient sites, so that text and image corroborate each other, allowing readers to rediscover those timber, brick, and stone structures that have stood for a thousand years through words and pictures in tandem. It opens with Luo Yang's "His Name Is in These Ancient Sites" and closes with A Brief Chronology of Luo Zhewen and an editor's afterword, balancing readability with keepsake value.