Now I Sit Me Down (6 page)

The Austrian architect Bernard Rudofsky is best remembered for a series of provocative books, including
Architecture Without Architects
, based on a 1964 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, where he was a curator. Something of a design gadfly, he applauded the custom of prone dining. He observed that Roman diners, with but one hand free, had no use for cutlery, thus doing away with what he called table clutter. A cheerful iconoclast, Rudofsky despised the functional modern bathroom, for example, and disliked most domestic labor-saving devices. He particularly ridiculed chairs. “The more sensitive among us are aware of the ludicrous aspects of sitting on chairs—impaled on four toothpicks, as it were, or, draped limp like an oyster, over what resembles an outsized halfshell.”

Roman couch

Rudofsky's rather strained description was a calculated challenge to those who considered chair-sitting to be culturally superior to floor-sitting. He was certainly correct that the lack of chairs is not a sign of either primitiveness or ignorance. The refined Japanese and Koreans were long aware of sitting furniture, but chose to sit on floor mats instead. In India, upright sitting was introduced more than two centuries ago by the British, yet most people still perform a variety of tasks—cooking, eating, working—while seated cross-legged on the floor.

Selecting one sitting posture over another has far-reaching consequences. If you sit on floor mats, you are likely to develop an etiquette that requires removing footwear before entering the home. You are also more likely to wear sandals or slippers rather than laced-up shoes, and loose clothing that enables you to squat or sit cross-legged. Floor-sitters tend not to use tall wardrobes—it is more convenient to store things in chests and low cabinets closer to floor level. People who sit on mats are more likely to sleep on mats, too, just as chair-sitters are more likely to sleep in beds.
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Chair-sitting societies develop a variety of furniture such as dining tables, dressing tables, coffee tables, desks, and sideboards. Sitting on the floor also affects architecture: walking around the house in bare feet or socks demands smooth floors—no splinters—preferably warm wood rather than stone; places to sit are likely to be covered with soft mats or woven carpets; tall windowsills and very tall ceilings hold less appeal. Lastly, posture has direct physical effects. A lifetime of sitting unsupported on the floor develops muscles not required for chair-sitting, which is why chair-sitters, unaccustomed to sitting cross-legged, soon become uncomfortable in that position. And vice versa. People in India regularly sit up on train seats and waiting-room benches in the cross-legged position, which they find more comfortable than sitting with feet hanging down.

The ancient Egyptians were unusual in combining floor-sitting and chair-sitting, but in general the two customs make awkward partners. A chair in a room of floor-sitters is a rude intruder. Conversely, sitting on the floor among chairs is socially acceptable only when there is no other place to sit—and then only under certain circumstances such as in a crowded auditorium or airport waiting room. Sitting on the floor among chair-sitters disrupts the order of things, which is probably why teenagers like to do it. For precisely the same reason, sitting on the floor was fashionable among the European avant-garde in the 1920s, among the Beats in the 1950s, and among student protestors in the 1960s—it upset convention.

The Barbarian Bed

For thousands of years, the ancient Chinese sat and slept on the floor. But at the beginning of the second century
A.D.
this changed; they adopted the folding stool, and eventually the full range of sitting furniture. Why and how this happened tells us a lot about the social and cultural functions of chairs. The stage for this momentous change was set in northern China and Manchuria. Because this region has severe winters, sitting and sleeping on cold floors is uncomfortable and unhealthy, and as a result the northern Chinese invented an unusual device. The
kang
was a brick platform warmed by heated air passing through underfloor flues. Raised about two feet off the floor and covered in felt pads, woven mats, or rugs, the
kang
typically extended across the full width of the room and served as a sleeping platform. During the day, sleeping quilts were folded and placed on the side, and the raised area served—and still serves in some rural households—as the main living space of the home.

During the summer the Chinese slept on beds. Beds appeared very early in China: a bed has been found in a burial site that dates from the third or fourth century
B.C.
A second-century
B.C.
tomb painting shows men seated cross-legged on a bed, suggesting that beds were also used as divans. Eventually, beds were fitted with low railings on three sides, and a folded sleeping quilt provided a padded backrest, creating a sort of couch. Thus, from very early times, the Chinese were distinguished from other East Asian cultures by combining sitting on the floor with sitting up, not on chairs but on raised furniture.

This pragmatism may explain the apparent ease with which, in the second century
A.D.
, the Chinese adopted the stool. Here is an ancient description: “The [stool] has movable joints so that its legs can be crossed. It is threaded with cords to make it comfortable to sit upon. It can be folded in a moment. It only weighs a few catties [a few pounds].” This obviously describes an X-frame folding stool, identical to the type used by the Egyptians and later by the Minoans and the Greeks. The Chinese called the stool
hu chuang
.
Hu
(barbarian) was how they referred to anything foreign, and because there was no word for chair or stool they used
chuang
(bed), which was the only piece of sitting furniture they knew. The barbarian bed was evidently a cultural import, but from where? None of China's immediate neighbors used stools, so the source must have been farther away. Caravan routes linked northern China across the Gobi Desert and Persia to the Mediterranean port cities of Alexandria and Antioch. Hence, the most likely source for the
hu chuang
was the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire, precisely the area where the folding stool originated.

Chinese folding stool

Chinese folding stools were sometimes used as portable garden seats, and as camp furniture by military officers; where stools were
never
used was in the home. Just as modern-day Americans might spread a blanket on the ground for a picnic, but would not think of doing so in their living rooms, the ancient Chinese could not imagine bringing the
hu chuang
indoors. In the home, one sat on floor mats.

For several hundred years, the two different sitting postures—cross-legged on floor mats, and legs-down on stools—coexisted. It was not until the tenth century that the chair appeared. The stage was set sometime in the second or third century
A.D.
when, having acquired the habit of sitting on the raised
kang
—and on bed-couches—the Chinese created a portable
kang
in the form of a wooden platform. The wooden
kang
—the name was the same—was supported by a carved open frame and came in a variety of sizes, large enough to accommodate several sitters or small enough for a single person.
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The light platform could be easily moved from room to room or into the garden. People sat on it cross-legged, as they did on a stone
kang
. These movable daises accommodated a wide variety of activities—eating, studying, playing board games, relaxing.

Platform living spread throughout China during the Tang dynasty, a period when the country was reunified and people and ideas moved freely from north to south. A Tang mural shows a group of scholars at a banquet, sitting on wooden platforms arranged on three sides of a low table laden with dishes. The platforms and the table are both about knee-height. Most of the diners sit cross-legged, but two or three of them have one foot dangling over the edge. Sooner or later, the second foot will come down, and the dais will become—a seat.

A traditional stone
kang
allowed sitters to lean comfortably against the wall (just as an outdoor sitter leans back against a tree), but a freestanding wooden platform offered no such convenience. At some point, someone had the idea of adding a back to the platform. Once sitters were able to lean against a back, and also sit on the edge with the feet down, it did not take a great leap of the imagination to turn the wooden
kang
into a chair.

The decisive shift from floor-sitting to chair-sitting occurred during the Song dynasty. Frame chairs, with and without arms, are illustrated in scroll paintings of the tenth century. The oldest surviving Chinese chair, excavated by archaeologists in 1920, is a side chair dating from the eleventh century. It is called a yokeback chair because the curved top rail extends at each end and resembles the yoke of an oxcart. The sophisticated design uses mortise-and-tenon joints, stretchers to reinforce the legs, and a woven cane seat. Most important, it also includes an S-shaped splat to support the lumbar region of the back—the oldest known use of this device in the history of the chair. The yokeback—with and without arms—remained unchanged for centuries, and became the standard Chinese chair, used in reception rooms, banqueting halls, studies, and bedrooms. Being light, it was easily moved and could be carried outside. Upholstery was unknown although loose cushions were used, and for special occasions a colorful embroidered silk runner was draped over the yoke and the seat. The Chinese named their homegrown chair
yi
, which is derived from the verb “to lean”—one sat on a stool, but one leaned back on a chair.

Song dynasty yokeback chair

Tenth-century China is the unique case of a premodern floor-sitting culture that adopted the chair voluntarily, rather than as the result of conquest or colonization. The societal change was dramatic and swift. A copy of a tenth-century scroll painting,
The Night Revels of Han Xizai
, shows a banquet in the home of Han Xizai, a scholar and court dignitary. A woman playing a Chinese lute is entertaining the group; she is seated on a stool. Three male visitors occupy yokeback chairs. Han and a friend are seated on a wooden
kang
with a backrest on three sides. Several guests are standing but no one is sitting on the floor; indeed, there are no floor mats. Food and drinks are laid out on small tables. What is remarkable is the variety of sitting postures. Two of the chair-sitters are upright, the third leans forward, listening intently to the music, his hands on his knees—a very modern position. On the other hand, both Han and his friend sit on the platform in traditional floor-sitting postures: Han is cross-legged, while his friend, more casual, leans against the backrest with one knee raised. This scene exemplifies the Chinese culture's ability to mix innovation and tradition.