Main principles

Old Chinese philosophy holds that man should live in harmony with nature - the same principles are applied to architecture throughout history. Traditionally, the game between the Yin and Yang, their symmetry and balance was one of the main criteria used both in the secular and the religious architecture as well. Very important was the traditional way to choose the appropriate place to built any structure, the method traditionally called 'fengshui' (the wind and the water).
There were, and have remained up to date in most places couple of unifying principles: the front wall of the house would face the South and the main entrance would be placed at the middle. There would be no windows on the North side, where traditionally bad spirits along with the nomad tribes attacking the Main Kingdom proper habituated.

In any architectural complex important buildings were built in a row following each other along the straight line that went south-north, whereas the less important ones would be built on the side. In the big imperial complexes, like the Forbidden City, The Temple of Heaven etc, each of the buildings would be introduced by a gate that would normally serve as a resting point from which the building could be admired and observed.

Unlike on the West, stone was not taken as a symbol of monumentality and the long lasting, and thus most of the traditional architecture relies on wood as the main material. Some specific structures, like graves, walls etc were built from stone, and still the main architecture heritage remained of wood. One of the main reasons for that could be traced in the fact that the written word was considered to be monumental above all, and what monumental stone architecture represented in the West, Chinese written word was the equivalent to.

The fact that the same word remained for the city and the wall up to-date remains misleading and indicates traditional 'closeness' of the Chinese people. However, the fact is that the wall was the main architectural symbol of the city due to the traditional cosmological reasons - square symbolizes the Earth whereas the circle is the symbol of Heavens. Wall marked the balance on Earth, the balance between the agricultural and the non-agricultural settlement.

Palace, gong - the most common architectural structure, the word bearing different meanings through out the history, from the ordinary 'house' in the earliest writings to the imperial dwellings at a later stage.
It is stated that already at the beginning of BC the complex of buildings called palace was 2,5 km wide (Efangong, Qin Shihuang).
Gradually palace became small cities, the best example being the Forbidden City, 720,000 square meters in its surface. Inside the big palace, smaller buildings could be called palaces as well. Gardens like the Summer Palace would be called palace, as well as the imperial tombs ('underground palace').

Big scope religious structures were called palaces (Potala Palace, Lama Temple etc).

Storied building - lou, often translated as tower is a continuation of the terrace (tai) and it served mostly as the observation point at strategic places - bell and drum towers in each city announcing the dawn and dusk and the city gates closing, towers in the gardens etc

Storied Pavilion - ge, used as archive and library in ancient times. It is quite similar to the storied building called 'lou', the difference being windows and doors only on the front side. Ge was the highest architectural structure throughout the entire history.

Terrace - (tai), an ancient structure built of earth and stone with highly practical purposes - it served as observatory in most cases. Even the Great Wall has terraces each 300-400 m, and they are equally distributed along the Silk Road as well.

Pavilion - ting, the most common structure in ancient China remained in use until nowadays, still serving as kiosks and post stands. It was built either of wood and bamboo, rarely from stone, and could be found in several shapes (square, triangle, etc).