Chinese architecture 

Chinese architecture (Chinese:中國建築) is the embodiment of an architectural style that has developed over millennia in China and it has influenced architecture throughout East Asia.
 Since its emergence during the early ancient era, the structural principles of its architecture have remained largely unchanged. The main changes involved diverse decorative details. Starting with the Tang dynasty, Chinese architecture has had a major influence on the architectural styles of neighbouring East Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and Mongolia in addition to minor influences on the architecture of Southeast and South Asia including the countries of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines. 
Chinese architecture is characterized by bilateral symmetry, use of enclosed open spaces, feng shui (e.g. directional hierarchies), a horizontal emphasis, and an allusion to various cosmological, mythological or in general symbolic elements. Chinese architecture traditionally classifies structures according to type, ranging from pagodas to palaces. Due to the frequent use of wood, a relatively perishable material, as well as few monumental structures built of more durable materials, much historical knowledge of Chinese architecture derives from surviving miniature models in ceramic and published diagrams and specifications.
Some specimens show the influence of styles from beyond China, such as the influences on mosque structures originating in the Middle East. Although unifying aspects exist, Chinese architecture varies widely based on status or affiliation, such as whether the structures were constructed for emperors, commoners, or for religious purposes. Other variations in Chinese architecture are shown in vernacular styles associated with different geographic regions and different ethnic heritages.

The architecture of China is as old as Chinese civilization. From every source of information—literary, graphic, exemplary—there is strong evidence testifying to the fact that the Chinese have always enjoyed an indigenous system of construction that has retained its principal characteristics from prehistoric times to the present day. 
Over the vast area from Chinese Turkistan to Japan, from Manchuria to the northern half of French Indochina, the same system of construction is prevalent; and this was the area of Chinese cultural influence. That this system of construction could perpetuate itself for more than four thousand years over such a vast territory and still remain a living architecture, retaining its principal characteristics in spite of repeated foreign invasions—military, intellectual, and spiritual—is a phenomenon comparable only to the continuity of the civilization of which it is an integral part.
— Liang Sicheng, 1984
Throughout the 20th century, Chinese architects have attempted to bring traditional Chinese designs into modern architecture. Moreover, the pressure for urban development throughout China requires high speed construction and a greater floor area ratio: thus, in cities the demand for traditional Chinese buildings (which are normally less than 3 levels) has declined in favor of high-rises. However, the traditional skills of Chinese architecture, including major and minor carpentry, masonry, and stonemasonry, are used in the construction of vernacular architecture in China's rural areas.
History 

Chinese civilizations and cultures developed in the plains along China's numerous rivers that emptied into Bohai and Hongzhow bays. The most prominent of these rivers, the Yellow and the Yangtze, hosted many villages. 
The climate was warmer and more humid than today, allowing millet to be grown in the north and rice in the south. However, Chinese civilization has no single "origin". Instead, it featured a gradual multinuclear development between 4000 and 2000 BC – from village communities to what anthropologists call cultures to states.

Two of the more important cultures were Hongshan culture (4700–2900 BC) to the north of Bohai Bay in Inner Mongolia and Hebei Province and contemporaneous Yangshao culture (5000–3000 BC) in Henan Province. Between the two, and developing later, was Longshan culture (3000–2000 BC) in the central and lower Yellow River valley. These combined areas gave rise to thousands of small/proto-states by 3000 BC.
 Some shared a common ritual center that linked them to a single symbolic order, but others developed more independently. The emergence of walled cities during this time is a clear indication that the political landscape was often unstable. 
The Hongshan culture of Inner Mongolia (located along the Laoha, Yingjin, and Daling rivers that empty into Bohai Bay) was scattered over a large area but had a single, common ritual center of at least 14 burial mounds and altars over several ridges. It is dated to around 3500 BC, or possibly earlier. Although no evidence suggests village settlements nearby, its size is much larger than one clan or village could support. In other words, though rituals would have been performed there for the elites, the large area implies that audiences for the ritual would have encompassed all the villages of the Hongshan. As a sacred landscape, the center might have attracted supplicants from even further afield. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_architecture