Kang bed-stove
The kang (Chinese: 炕; pinyin: kàng; Manchu: nahan, Kazakh: кән) is a traditional heated platform, 2 metres or more long, used for general living, working, entertaining and sleeping in the northern part of China, where the winter climate is cold. It is made of bricks or other forms of fired clay and more recently of concrete in some locations. The word kang means "to dry".
Its interior cavity, leading to an often-convoluted flue system, channels the hot exhaust from a firewood/coal fireplace, usually the cooking fire from an adjacent room that serves as a kitchen, sometimes from a stove set below floor level. This allows a longer contact time between the exhaust (which still contains much heat from the combustion source) and (indirectly) the inside of the room, hence more heat transfer/recycling back into the room, effectively making it a ducted heating system similar to the Roman hypocaust. A separate stove may be used to control the amount of smoke circulating through the kang, maintaining comfort in warmer weather. Typically, a kang occupies one-third to one half of the floor space, and is used for sleeping at night and for other activities during the day.[1] A kang which covers the entire floor is called a dikang (Chinese: 地炕; pinyin: dì kàng; lit. 'ground kang').[1]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Gao_Yinzhang_-_The_blessing_of_the_good_and_the_joyfullness.jpg/220px-Gao_Yinzhang_-_The_blessing_of_the_good_and_the_joyfullness.jpg)
Like the
History
The kang is said[by whom?] to be derived from the heated bed floor called a huoqiang found in Neolithic China, according to archeological excavations of building remains in Banpo Xi'an. Sites in Shenyang, Liaoning, show humans using the heated bed floor as early as 7,200 years ago.[2][3] The bed at this excavation is made of 10 cm pounded clay on the floor. The bed was heated by zhidi, placing an open fire on the bed floor and clearing the ashes before sleeping. In the excavated example the repeated burning is believed to have turned the bed surface hard and moisture resistant.
The first known heated platform appeared in what is now Northeastern China and used a single-
Heated walls with a double-flue system were found in a 4th-century palace building in
Literary evidence from
In Guanji Temple [near the present-day Fengrun in Hebei province
The kang may have evolved to its bed design due to ongoing cultural changes during the
Culture
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8d/Wanderer_warmed_by_kang300.jpg/250px-Wanderer_warmed_by_kang300.jpg)
Traditional Chinese Dwellings (Zhongguo chuantong minju) (a bilingual text) has a few line drawings of kangs. It says that the kang is used to cook meals and heat the room, making full use of the heat-retaining capacity of the loess (soil used to make adobe). The kang produces radiant heat to indirectly warm the interior space as well as the bed mass itself. It has been speculated that one of the oldest forms of Chinese housing, heated cave dwellings known as yaodong, widespread throughout northern China would have been uninhabitable without the kang.[1]
The kang was also an important feature of traditional dwellings in often-frigid
See also
- Hypocaust
- Kotatsu
- Masonry heater
- Ondol – similar system in Korea
- Russian stove
- Underfloor heating
Notes
- ^ JSTOR 1568775.
- ^ BeanOlesenKim (2010).
- ^
References
- Bean, Robert; Olesen, Bjarne W.; Kim, Kwang Woo (January 2010), "History of Radiant Heating and Cooling Systems" (PDF), ASHRAE Journal
- Bernan, Walter (1845), On the History and Art of Warming and Ventilating Rooms and Buildings by Open Fires, Hypocausts ... Stoves ... and Other Methods; with notices of the progress of personal and fireside comfort, and of the management of fuel, Walter Bernan is a pen-name for Robert Stuart Meikleham, London: George Bell
- Guo, Qinghua (2001). in Chan, Alan; Clancey, Gregory; Loy, Hui-Chieh (eds.). Historical Perspectives on East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine. Singapore: World Scientific. pp. 505–514. ISBN 9789971692599. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, held August 23–27, 1999 in Singapore.
External links
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