Menzhou and Lianying (门轴、连楹、门枕、门簪): How a Chinese Gate Door Turns

Top: the pivot bar

Behind the middle sill (中槛) a timber called the 连楹 is fixed along its inside face, with a socket for the door’s top pivot. Ma Bingjian gives its width as two thirds of the sill’s height and its thickness as half its width.

Door pins

For a large door the sill and pivot bar are locked together by 门簪: each has a hexagonal head on the outside, about four fifths of the sill’s height across, and a long tenon that passes through the sill and the bar and is wedged behind. Usually four are used, two on a small door; the heads are often carved. Ma treats them as a typical through-pin.

Bottom: stone and iron

The bottom pivot turns in a cast-iron cup (海窝) set into a stone block, the door-pillow stone (门枕石), which sits under the bottom sill, the sill being notched to fit over it.

The Song version

The Yingzao Fashi (1103, juan 6, 版門) builds a board door on a heavy edge board (肘版) that is left long top and bottom as pivots. Above, the pivot turns in a cross-piece called 雞栖木, the Song name for the pivot bar; below, in a door stone (門砧). Tall doors use iron sleeves, an iron socket plate (鵝臺) and an iron shoe. Its door pins (門簪) come four to a door, and each is divided in three along its tail so that only the middle third is left as the tenon. All sizes are given per foot of door height.

Liang Sicheng’s summary

Liang Sicheng (清式營造則例, ch.5) describes the Qing gate the same way: the pivot’s top passes into the pivot bar (連楹) and its foot stands on the door-stone (門枕); door pins with six-sided heads hold the pivot bar to the middle sill, and the door-stone can be carved in many shapes.

Proportions in the model are illustrative.