The aesthetic of fen qiang dai wa, or “white walls and black tiles,” defines the traditional residential architecture of the Jiangnan region, located in China’s lower Yangtze Delta. Fen and dai, or black and white, are references to the colours of the region’s vernacular architecture, which generally presents a rather humble and austere appearance that contrasts with the bright colours of Chinese imperial architecture. Jiangnan, which includes cities such as Suzhou, Yangzhou, Nanjing, and Shanghai, has long been one of the country’s cultural and economic centres. Today, its “white walls and black tiles” provide a symbolic model for the region, shaping visual codes in architectural practice and the wider built environment. Its iconic black-and-white style dominates historical preservation and broader contemporary practice, such as I.M. Pei’s Suzhou Museum (2006). Taken to an extreme, this aesthetic has established an idealized visual standard for China’s recent “beautiful countryside” initiative, influencing design choices even in far-away regions like Xinjiang.
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However, the modern popularity of white walls and black tiles is—at least in part—the result of a misreading or creative reinterpretation of style influenced by black-and-white photography, which yields idealized, monochromatic images of architectural spaces and surfaces.
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While black-and-white photographs emphasize shadow effects and relationships between body, architecture, and space in Suzhou gardens, colour photographs of the same sites reveal very different qualities. In studying the photographs from Hélène Binet’s The Walls of Suzhou Gardens (2021), it quickly becomes apparent that their walls may not be white after all. Binet’s photographs capture the modulated colours and diverse expressions of these walls. Their limewashed surfaces are canvases not only for plays of light and shadow but also for an organic co-production of rains, mosses, and lichens. In Ming Dynasty literature, residents of Suzhou gardens would use rice porridge and fishy liquid to encourage moss and vine growth; such naturally weathered appearances were preferred. Early garden accounts describe grey and even black walls. For instance, in her 1938 book Chinese Gardens, Dorothy Graham describes Suzhou as a city that “lies within grey crenellated walls” whose Lingering Garden had “black and high” walls. However, the four photographs of Suzhou Gardens in Graham’s book do not depict such darkened walls.
From White Walls and Black Tiles by Taro Cai and Peter Sealy.