Ming Tang (明堂)

The bright hall — the open space in front of a building where qi is said to gather. Ming tang is the open area before a building: the courtyard, the forecourt, the space that is neither inside nor outside. The tradition reads it as the place where qi collects before entering, and its preferred form is level, open and sheltered.

It belongs to the classical vocabulary of the tradition. The bright hall — the open space in front of a building where qi is said to gather. The bright hall is the clearest case in the tradition of a term that is simultaneously a symbolic and a functional requirement, and the classical descriptions move between the two without a break.

The classical sources describe an inner and an outer bright hall and treat the inner one as the more important. The reading is practical as much as symbolic: a cramped or steeply falling forecourt is described as unfavourable for reasons that also apply to drainage and access. It is grouped under Earth (土) in the five-element system.