Why are there so few ancient Chinese architecture?

There are loads of ancient Chinese architecture, but the thing is, the Chinese government prefers to showcase its 'western buildings' as opposed to its ancient and traditional buildings.

Also, during revolutions, the winning leaders would destroy the buildings and try to change the culture of people's everyday life, such as forcing people to wear a specific garment, have a certain hairstyle etc.

Having said that, I think you will find that the number of Chinese ancient architecture exceeds those of Korea's and Japan's. People only think of the east of China and forget about the rural areas, which have well-preserved culture and buildings.

In addition, Chinese people prefer to look forward rather than to look back, which is the case with Koreans and Japanese.

Yes. Most of it was due to the Cultural Revolution. There many building there either worn down or used as factories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Destruction_of_antiques.2C_historical_sites_and_culture

Because Japan and Korea are smaller countries, their architecture are more concentrated, thus giving the illusion that there are more. China is a big country with many cities that are "unknown" to foreigners. If you want to check out ancient Chinese architecture, don't just concentrate on Shanghai, Hong Kong or Beijing, but other Chinese cities, too. The history of China didn't just happen in these three cities. In fact, Beijing wasn't the capital until the last dynasty and Shanghai and Hong Kong were just little fishing ports.

I agree with you. China needs to make more effort to preserve and develop its own, rather than copying western style in large scale.

Several reasons:

1. China has a 5000 year history, but it's been 5000 years of civil war really. It's always been common practice in China to destroy the losers buildings and try to wipe out any memory of the previous rulers.

2. China never really advanced very far in terms of construction. Yes they built the wall, but unless it was a pagoda, they never really mastered building buildings that stood over 3 stories max. They mainly built small one floor buildings called hutongs or shikumens. These buildings have had to be destroyed for larger modern skyscrapers because there is no room for them. As well, many of the Chinese style building were made from shoddy materials and fell down.

3. In the Cultural Revolution, most of what was left was destroyed by Mao. Not just buildings but most of thier ancient artifacts also.

4. The Ming Tombs were only recenlty found and are just rock caverns, so too hard to destroy, although I'm sure someone has tried.

5. Korea and Japan are deeply traditional countries and practice ancestor worship. Chinese see old things as bad and new things as good. Chinese do not want to be reminded of the past and have as a whole, worked together to purposely weed out any old buildings in the cities. Chinese like glass and steel.

Ancient China was the world's most dominant, affluent and richest civilization for a very long time until the 1500's.

The Cultural Revolution destroyed many of them, I would put it at around 60%.

if you went out of Beijing, you would find plenty of towers, houses and tombs which were built in the ancient times... Beijing isn't the whole China, you know...

and do not be so optimistic about Japan... all of their castles were demolished and what you see now is just the reconstruction... as for temples -- nobody make a spectral analysis of the stones there, so it's very likely they were built later than claimed for tourists...