Learn · Furniture · 14 min read · Updated September 2026

The furniture of the tradition

The rules of feng shui were written for rooms furnished in a particular way, and the furniture explains the rules. How the Chinese came down from the mat and up onto the chair, and what that did to every height in the house; the six pieces the manuals assume, the canopy bed, the heated bed, the screen, the altar table, the horseshoe chair and the square table for eight; the wall of honour of the hall with its scroll and its two armchairs; and what each piece taught the site’s guides.

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Wood

Fig. 01 A chair in the light. The tradition’s pieces were plain, hard and high, and the rules were written for rooms that held them.

Every rule on this site about a bed, a seat or a table was written for a room that held a particular bed, seat or table, and the rules make more sense when the furniture is in view. The canopy bed explains the tradition’s bedroom; the horseshoe chair with its curved back is the command position made in wood; the folding screen is the remedy the manuals reach for first; the altar table against the wall of honour is why a hall has a centre. This essay gives the pieces, how the Chinese came to sit on them, the hall they furnished, and what each one taught the guides.

From the mat to the chair

The Han Chinese sat on the floor. The house of the first centuries was furnished at mat level, with low tables, armrests and a platform bed, as Japan’s still is, and its doors, windows and sills were set for a body seated on the ground. The chair came from outside: FitzGerald traced it from the folding stool the second-century court called the barbarian bed, hu chuang, brought from the nomadic north, through the Buddhist monasteries with their raised seats, to the Song, by which time the whole of the Chinese house had risen with its people. Tables came up to the height of a seated elbow, the bed became a piece of furniture rather than a floor, windowsills rose to the height of a standing eye, and the tradition of the yang house, which was codified in the same centuries, took the chair-level room as the room it described. Every number the site gives for a threshold, a sill, a seat or a table is a number of the chair-level house; the entrance guide’s heights and the windows guide’s sills are the Song’s, and so is the command position, which is a rule about a chair.

Tradition · Hardwood and no nails

The furniture the collectors prize is the hardwood of the late Ming and early Qing, the yellow rosewood, huanghuali, and the purple sandalwood, zitan, joined without a nail by mortise and tenon so that the pieces could be taken apart and carried, and left plain to show the grain. Ellsworth catalogued it first in the West and Wang Shixiang, who had lived with it, catalogued it best; Handler’s phrase for its manner, austere luminosity, is the tradition’s taste in a room stated in two words. Wen Zhenheng’s treatise, which Clunas reads, says what a scholar should own and what he should be ashamed of, and its objection to the ornate and the lacquered is the same objection the site makes to the trade’s dragons: a room is furnished with plain things in the right places, and the places do the work.

The pieces

Fig. 01 Six pieces of the classical house. A: the canopy bed of the Ming, a platform with a post at each corner, a frame above and railings below, hung with curtains that were drawn at night, so that the sleeper lay in a room within the room. B: the kang of the north, a brick platform heated by the kitchen’s flue, which ran beneath it to a chimney; the household sat, ate and slept on it through the winter. C: the folding screen, six or eight leaves on hinges, the tradition’s movable wall, drawn in elevation with its plan below; it divided a room, stopped a line of sight and turned a draught. D: the altar table, long, high and narrow with its upturned ends, against the wall of honour, and the square table set before it for the meal and the offering. E: the horseshoe chair, its back and arms one curved rail, the seat given to the guest of honour and the elder. F: the Eight Immortals table, a square for eight, two stools to a side, the family’s table for four centuries. The pieces are the ones the site’s room guides keep referring to, and the ones a reader of the classical manuals meets on every page. The forms are the hardwood pieces of the late Ming that Wang Shixiang catalogued and Handler described; the kang is the vernacular exception, brick and not wood, and is drawn in section. The site’s guides to the bedroom, the living room and the dining room say what each piece taught the rules.

Six pieces furnish the rooms the manuals describe, and the drawing gives them. The canopy bed, jiazichuang, is a platform with a post at each corner, a frame above and railings below, hung with curtains that were drawn at night: a room within the room, with its head to a wall, its own enclosure, its own darkness and nothing over the sleeper but its own frame, which is the bedroom guide’s whole prescription described as a piece of furniture. The kang is the northern house’s heated brick bed, warmed by the kitchen’s flue running beneath it, on which the household sat, ate and slept through the winter, and it is the reason the kitchen adjoined the elders’ room and the reason a northern bedroom was the warmest room in the house; Knapp gives it region by region. The folding screen, pingfeng, six or eight leaves on hinges, is the tradition’s movable wall, and it is the remedy the manuals give for almost every fault of alignment, a door facing a bed, a door facing a window, a line from the entrance to the far wall; the small apartments guide uses it to make a bedroom out of a studio, as the Ming did. The altar table, tiao an, long, high and narrow with its upturned ends, stood against the wall of honour with the incense burner and the vases on it, and the square table for eight, the baxianzhuo, named for the Eight Immortals of legend, stood before it for the meal and the offering; the round table the dining room guide prefers is its larger cousin of the Qing. The horseshoe chair, quanyi, whose back and arms are one curved rail, was the seat of honour and the elder’s seat, a wall behind, arms either side and the room in front, which is the command position made in wood. The cabinets, the daybed and the writing table, which Handler describes with the rest, furnish the study the desk placement guide draws.

Design observation · Hard, high and plain

A designer measuring the classical pieces finds them higher and harder than modern ones: seats at fifty to fifty-two centimetres against Panero’s forty-three to forty-six, tables at eighty against seventy-five, and no upholstery at all. The height is the reason the tradition’s elders sat well, which the later life guide borrows, and the hardness is the reason a Ming chair holds a body upright and facing the room, which the command position wants and a sofa does not give. The plainness is a decision about attention: a room whose furniture does not compete for the eye leaves the eye for the door, the window and the person opposite, which is what the tradition’s rules are about. Alexander’s pattern language reaches the same furniture by another road, in its preference for a few good pieces with their backs to walls and its dislike of the room arranged round a television.

The hall

Fig. 02 The wall of honour of a classical hall, in elevation, as the Ming and Qing houses kept it and the site’s living-room guide keeps referring to. At the centre a hanging scroll, a landscape or a calligraphy changed with the season, with a pair of couplets either side of it; beneath, against the wall, the altar table, long, high and narrow, with the incense burner at its centre and a vase at each end, the family’s altar on ordinary days and the ancestors’ on the festivals. Before it the square table, the Eight Immortals table, for the meal and the offering, and either side of that the two armchairs of the hall, the host’s on the east, which is the right as one faces the wall, and the guest of honour’s on the west, in the order the Book of Rites gives for the eastern and the western steps. Along the side walls the lesser chairs, in pairs with a small table between, for the rest of the company by rank. The arrangement is symmetrical about the scroll, the wall is the room’s north, and everything the tradition says about the seat with a wall behind it and the door in view was first said here. The heights are the classical pieces’: the altar table at about ninety centimetres, the square table at eighty, the seats at fifty, the scroll hung with its lower roller at eye level. Knapp’s survey gives the hall and its wall of honour region by region; Handler and Wang Shixiang give the pieces.

The hall, the tang, was the room the furniture was for, and the drawing gives its wall of honour in elevation. At the centre hung a scroll, changed with the season as the art guide describes, with a pair of couplets either side; beneath it, against the wall, the altar table with the burner and the vases, the family’s altar on ordinary days and the ancestors’ at the festivals; before that the square table; and either side of the square table the two armchairs of the hall, the host’s on the east, which is the right as one faces the wall, and the guest of honour’s on the west, in the order the Book of Rites gives for the eastern and the western steps of a hall, up which the host and the guest went separately. Along the side walls stood the lesser chairs in pairs with a small table between, for the rest of the company by rank, and the living room guide’s seating plan is that order drawn from above. The wall was the room’s north whatever the compass said, the arrangement was symmetrical about the scroll, and the seat of honour had the wall behind it, the room before it and the door in view, because the hall was the first room in which anyone said so. Knapp’s survey finds the wall of honour in every region’s hall, in the grandest house and the poorest, with the same table and the same scroll at different prices.

The bed as a room

The piece that explains the tradition’s bedroom is not the bed but the room the bed made of itself. The canopy bed, jiazichuang, was a platform with a post at each corner, a frame above, railings on three sides and curtains that were drawn at night, and a household that owned one slept in a room inside the room: enclosed on three sides, open on the fourth to the chamber and its door, with its own dark, its own warmth, its own small shelf for a lamp and a cup, and its head against a wall because the frame stood against one. Handler’s history of the furniture gives the type and Wen Zhenheng’s manual gives the taste, and the bedroom page’s rules are a description of it: the solid wall behind the head, the enclosure, the dark, the door seen from the pillow through the one open side. When the tradition says a bed should not lie under a window or in a door’s line, it is saying that a bed should be a canopy bed, and the modern bed, a mattress on legs in the middle of a plastered box, has lost everything the rule assumed. Alexander’s pattern language arrives at the same piece from the other side: its bed alcove, a bed set in a recess with a low ceiling and a wall on three sides, is the canopy bed built into the house, and the pattern argues from the sleep of the people who have them. A household that cannot buy a four-poster can build the alcove’s conditions with what the bed placement guide gives, a headboard, a wall, a curtain, a canopy, a lamp within reach, and the small apartments guide draws the bed nook a studio can make; a household that has a canopy bed, and there are more of them in the West’s bedrooms than there were, has the tradition’s bedroom in a piece of furniture and can put it against any wall.

Fig. 03 The canopy bed, jiazichuang, drawn as what it was, a room inside the room. In plan, a platform of about two metres by two and a quarter stands against the chamber’s wall with railings on three sides and its fourth side open toward the room and its door; a step before it, a small shelf inside for the lamp and the cup, and curtains that were drawn along the open side at night. In section, the platform at about fifty centimetres, the four posts, the frame at two metres and the canopy, with the curtains hung inside the posts, so that the sleeper lay in a dark, warm box open on one side to a room they could see. The bedroom page’s rules are a description of the piece: the head against a wall, because the frame stood against one; the enclosure, because of the railings; the dark, because of the curtains; the door seen from the pillow, because the open side faced it. When the tradition says a bed should not lie under a window or in the door’s line, it is saying that a bed should be this, and the modern mattress on legs in the middle of a plastered box has lost everything the rule assumed. Wang Shixiang 1986 and Handler 2001 for the type and its sizes; Wen Zhenheng for the taste; Alexander 1977 for the bed alcove that arrives at the same piece from the other side.

The drawing gives the piece in plan and section, and a reader can lay the bedroom page’s rules over it one by one. The platform stands against the chamber wall, so the head has the wall behind it; the railings run along three sides, so the sleeper is enclosed; the curtains hang inside the posts, so the box is dark and warm; and the fourth side is open toward the room and its door, so the door is seen from the pillow. Wang Shixiang’s measured examples of the Ming pieces are about two metres by two and a quarter on a platform of half a metre, with the frame at two metres, which is to say a small room, and the step before it, the shelf inside it and the lamp on the shelf are the furniture of that room. Alexander’s bed alcove, a bed set in a recess with a wall on three sides and a low ceiling, is the same piece built into the house, and both are what the tradition’s bedroom rules assume without saying.

What the furniture taught, in order

The chair set the heights. Seat at fifty, table at eighty, sill at a standing eye; the tradition’s house is the chair-level house of the Song, and the site’s numbers are its.
The canopy bed taught enclosure. Head to a wall, a frame and curtains round the sleeper, nothing overhead but the bed’s own roof.
The horseshoe chair taught the command position. A wall behind, arms either side, the room and the door in front.
The screen taught the remedy. A line that cannot be moved is broken with a movable wall.
The altar table taught the centre. A wall has a middle, something stands against it and something hangs above it.
The square table taught the seat of honour. Eight places, two to a side, the host on the east and the guest on the west.
The kang taught the plan. Warmth comes from the kitchen’s wall, and the elders’ room is the one it touches.