Glossary · C
Cai
Also called ts’ai
The module of the Yingzao fashi: the section of a standard timber (a bracket arm), 15 fen high and 10 fen wide, in eight grades from 9 × 6 cun to 4½ × 3 cun.
Rules that use the word
Everything is measured in cai and fen. Take the section of the standard timber, the cai, as the module of the building: it is 15 fen high and 10 fen wide, and every member is dimensioned in fen.
Choose the grade of cai by the rank of the building. There are eight grades of cai, from 9 × 6 cun down to 4½ × 3 cun; use the first for great halls of nine or eleven bays and the smallest for pavilions and ceiling coffers.
A full timber is a cai and a zhi: 21 fen. Between two stacked arms leave a spacer of 6 fen, the zhi; a cai plus a zhi, 21 fen, is a “full timber” (zucai) and the vertical step of each tier of a bracket set.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters Proportion and Number, China, Japan and Korea, Reading the Treatises.
A feature of Chinese architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Brutalism · Bungalow · Buttery · Buttress · Callimachus · Cantilever · Capital · Capstone