ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the 12 chapters on ancient Chinese architecture in this book, against the backdrop of a modern scholarship on the topic that emerged in the 1920s. Over a century, pioneering scholars discovered sites and artefacts, establishing a skeleton for the following generations, reflected here, to study further. Seven approaches are identified: chronology-with-cases, structural assemblage, sectional observation, interpretation, formal reasoning, textual study, and temporal semantic reading; these studies unfold at three levels: imperial, gentry, and vernacular. This chapter confirms that, upon the groundwork of these pioneers, scholars here have provided ways of “understanding” on multiple aspects, leaving perspectives for more to come.
