The entrance to Dangjie is the part of the residential building that shows the owner's status, so "there must be a gatehouse in front of the door, carved with horses and chariots on bricks, which is absolutely exquisite." Anhui's eight-character gatehouse is divided into three to five floors, which is the densest place for brick carving. On the zhaobi, the layout is "four forks in the center": the center of the zhaobi is decorated with diamond or round brick carvings, and the four corners (four forks) are decorated with triangular brick carvings. Brick carvings in these places are rich in content, and the stories of characters are all based on historical records or local operas. There are also quite a few literati activities and rural life in real life, such as sightseeing, playing games, and collecting elegant stories. Immortals, dragons, flowers and birds, and auspicious animals are also common.
Brick carvings are also used to embed fish where the cornices on the roofs of houses are raised. The legendary octopus has the function of protecting the house. If there are temples, ancestral halls or wilderness in the south of residential buildings, brick carvings of "flying beasts" must be set in the middle of the roof of the hall to ward off evil spirits. Octopus and wild animals are generally stylized in shape.