Hmong Stilt Houses (Diaojiallou)
By Jingqi Chen
Hmong stilt houses, or diaojiaolou, are a unique regional handicraft and a national intangible cultural heritage; these structures are also known as semi-stilt houses. Stilt houses were documented as early as the Warring States period, when the poet Qu Yuan wrote: “The warm light rising from the east / glows on the railing and the godly trees.” Hmong stilt houses building techniques are an inheritance of ancient crafts that have been adapted to the mountainous terrain over time.
The unique structure serves the purpose of leaving more space for agriculture. Most of these houses are built on slopes with an angle between 30 to 70 degrees and employ column-and-tie construction, in which columns directly support the roof without roof beams. Hmong stilt houses use mortise and tenon joints to connect pieces of wood. Each column and beam has thousands of mortise holes, and the woodworkers building these structures have to take great care to ensure measurements and cutting is correct so that they can stand on incredibly steep slopes. From this, we can gather that Hmong woodworkers are incredibly skilled. Hmong stilt houses are not only unique structurally, they are also unique aesthetically. These buildings resting on slopes consist largely of rectangular and triangular shapes, two simple and steady shapes. The result is a clean and elegant appearance that that gives a sense of simple beauty to the viewer.