The Qing armchair is a new form which came into vogue at a comparatively late date. Its structure is completely different from that of other armchairs dating to earlier periods. A huge number of Qing armchairs have survived in proportion to other types of furniture from the same period.

Qing chairs used to be known by the ambiguous term taishiyi. The taishiyi is defined differently in various regions and at different dates. In the Song dynasty, it was identified as a folding chair (jiaoyi) with a U-shaped crest rail (heye tuonao); in the Ming dynasty, it was a horseshoe-back armchair (quanyi). A taishiyi would often represent the honoured seat in the centre of a hall found in the homes of the wealthy. Taishiyi  is merely a general term that could be applied to any kind of chair.1 Therefore in this book the term Qing or Qing-style armchair (Qingshi fushouyi) is used to distinguish between other armchairs of different styles such as Ming-style rectangular-back armchairs (Mingshi guanmaoyi) and low-back or rose armchairs (meiquiyi).