Ganlan is a type of wooden or bamboo building raised above the ground on piles. The first known occurrence of the term is in the Liao zhuan 獠傳 (Biography of Liao) in the Wei shu (Book of Wei) (Wei 1974, 2248). In this text, the term ganlan was considered to be a transliteration of a Southern Man (Nanman 南蠻) term for a house into Chinese characters. The house type was characterized by an elevated platform (Dai 1948, 7).