dà'é en

Da'e, literally "great forehead" (Kroll 2015, 73, 99) is usually used to refer to over-sized column-top tie beams often found in the timber architecture of Shanxi and Shaanxi constructed during the Yuan period (thirteenth-fourteenth centuries). As an architectural term, da’e is only recorded in the Yingzao fashi, but it is not clearly defined. Based on the context in which the term is used, it is possible that da’e is an alternate name for lan’e 闌額. This is because it is often used together with yan’e 簷額 and you’e 由額 where the term lan’e would normally appear. Still, nothing in the Yingzao fashi indicates that this so-called da’e is a larger size version of lan’e. In a seminal article, the twentieth-century architectural historian Zhang Yuhuan used this term to describe huge longitudinal beams found in Yuan timber architecture in Shanxi and Shaanxi. Since that time many modern scholars consider it to be the signature element of the so-called “da’e style” buildings of the Yuan dynasty. Da’e can be placed either under the eaves or inside the building, but must be parallel to the roof ridge as part of the zongjia 縱架. Some scholars believe that the Yuan dynasty da’e are equivalent to the yan’e in the Yingzao fashi, while others disagree.