Located in the central part of the upper ditch in Hongcun Village, the Ideal-Upholding Hall was built in the 5th year of the Xianfeng Period of the Qing Dynasty(1885 A.D.). It was the residence of Wang Dinggui, a great salt dealer in the last years of the Qing Dynasty. The whole building is of timberwork, with the gorgeously decorated inner bricks, stones and wood; its total space is 2100 square meters, with the construction area of more than 3000 square meters. A well-preserved big folk residence, it has altogether 9 dooryards, 60 rooms of different sizes, 136 wooden pillars and 60 doors and windows. The house consists of the inner and outer yards, the front and back halls, the eastern and western wing-rooms, the study, the fish-pond hall, the kitchen and the stall, etc., pluspaishan (mountain-removing) House (for playing mah-jong), and tunyun (cloud-swalloing) House (for having opium). There are also bedrooms for bodyguards and servants, too. Water can be taken indoors tahnks to the ponds and wells inside the house.
The front hall is the essential part of the whole house, with an august middle gate erecting behind the entrance. It is said that Wang Dinggui bought the title of “the prefect of the 5th rank” from the government after making a fortune from his trade. Having gotten this title, Wang Dinggui felt that he no longer belonged to the social class which he was originally in, so he built the middle gate(which is also called the ritual gate and designed for the yamums) to show off his official stateliness. The middle gate was only opened on important festivals or to welcome the VIPs, while the common guests must enter the house from the side doors beside the middle gate. There is an engraving which looks quite like the Chinese character shang( which also looks like an upside-down ingot that implies the rich financial resources ) on both side doors. Very rich as he was, and though having bought an official title, Wang Dinggui knew that his occupation as a businessman was still looked down upon by people at that time. This annoyed the master a lot, so he thought of this idea, meaning that for those who entered the house through the side doors: whatever you are, you must pass behind my feet, the feet of a merchant. In fact he did this only to whip the devil round the stump. However, he only hung the character fu (auspiciousness)on the upper part of the middle gate, for despite anything he still considered the officials as his superior in social status, ——a reason why the businessmen at that time spent a great deal of money in buying an official title after they became rich.
A wood-carving picture, “100 Kids Bustling Around On The Lantern Festival”, is inlayed above the character fu (auspiciousness) on the middle gate. The picture shows the scene in which 100 boys are enjoying the lantern festival, some paddling land boats, some others playing the dragon lantern, all looking quite happy, and all vividly engraved with diverse posts, a lifellike reflection of the traditional idea: “More boys mean more happiness”. On the corbel brackets of the picture's two sides are engraved the actors' lines of four plays from the novel Romance of Three Kingdoms, while above are the carvings of the “Southern & Northern Gods of Wealth”, over which are the attic protection boards, where Wang Dinggui designed four wooden carving pillars representing the four ancient occupations: the fisher, the feller, the farmer and the scholar.
In the crossbeam of the front hall, is engraved a picture of “His Majesty Su's Feast” (Su is one of the emperors of the Tang Dynasty), sculpted in a whole piece of beam; whlie in ancient times, people set up the crossbeam before they did the carvings, even if a small detail was not properly engraved, ——meaning a slight problem in the sculpture would lead to the failure of the whole work, a manifestation of the intricacy of the ancient craftsmanship. In the picture, the civil and military officials are all amusing themselves before the feast hosted by His Majesty Su begins. They are playing music, chessing, reading or painting; even such details as boiling water and hollowing out one's ears are vividly engraved, too. It is a true masterpiece for the diversity of characters and the variational scenes. On the two steles beside the picture are engraved the images of “Ingot” and “Fishing with a Gold Barb”, ——an allusion to the fact that the Chinese character “yu” for the word “fish” has the same pronunciation with that of the Chinese character meaning “aboundance”, implicating people's wish for aboundance every year. After all, getting an official promotion and making fortune are mutually dependant in the feudal society.
On the arch canopy of the front hall, there is a canopy support which is quite rare in China, of the type of “two upside-down lions playing a ball”. On the doors of the wing-rooms are engraved the four Gods of Auspiciousness, Salary, Longevity, and Happiness, plus the “Eight Immortals” waited upon by eight Taoist boys, a wish of the owner that his offspring could be as intelligent and able as the Eights Immortals are.
In the whole house there are altogether nine dooryards, specially meaningful in the eyes of the businessmen. They regarded the yard as a treasure trove, the rain as gold and the snow as silver, for which when it rained, they would think that money was falling from the sky, and when the rain flowed down to the ground from the four corners of the yard, they would think that all the money went to their own houses. That's why the four Chinese characters “tian xi chun gu”(meaning that the Heaven is bestowing people a good fortune; the character “xi” originally meaning that the water pipes, which had been conserved in good conditions until now, were made of pure tin, but here it meaning the same as the character “ci”——“to bestow” ) were written on the four corners.
A Eight-Immortal table and two Eight-Immortal chairs are placed in the front of the front hall. The so-called “Eight-Immortal table” is made of fine wood and carved in the shape of flowers; while on the back of the chairs are engraved the weapons of the legendary Eight Immortals (also called the “Hidden Eight Immortals”). Usually a long narrow rosewood table is placed behind the Eight-Immortal table and in the middle of it is placed a chime clock, on both sides of which there are the cap-tubes(something tube-shaped for putting in the skullcaps). An ancient porcelain bottle is to the east of the cap-tube, a mirror with an elaborate wooden base to its west, implicating “to live peacefully for lifelong”(the pronunciations of the four Chinese characters “zhong sheng ping jing”(to live peacefully for lifelong) is the same with those of the characters “zhong sheng”(the sound of the clock), “ping”(the bottle) and “jing”(the mirror)). By this the owner wished that all his family members would lead a peaceful life and his business could be soundly run, ——a representation of the expectations and yearnings placed upon their own living conditions by the businessmen in Huizhou at that time.
Each column in the back hall is engraved the word “shou”(longevity) upon its footstone. Just as its name implies, the back hall is where the hosts serve their parents and eldership, and what traveler usually call “gaotang” (where the reverend parents live). Just because it is the residence for the eldership, the beams in the back hall are all carved with the pictures of “On The Birthday of Guo Ziyi” and “Nine Generations of A Family Living Under The Same Roof”. Guo Ziyi was a famous general in Tang Dynasty, who contributed in the subjugation of the An Lushan & Shi Siming Insurgence, for which he was confered King of Fenyang by His majesty Su. It is said that the emperor married his daughter Princess Shengyang (the rising sun) to Guo Ziyi's youngest son, Guo Ai. On the birthday of Guo Ziyi, all his seven sons and eight sons-in-law came to celebrate and show their reverence. It was only Guo Ai's wife, the Princess, saying that she was of the imperial lineage, refused to follow the manners of a daughter-in-law because according to the feudal etiquette, the royalty didn’t do obeisance to the subject. The result was that she was beaten by her husband, the indignant Guo Ai, which was the origin of the renowned play “Beat The Golden Branch” (In ancient China, the offspings of the royalty are called “the golden branches and the jade leaves.”). “Nine Generations of A Family Living Under The Same Roof” is a story about an official Zhang Gongyi in Yuncheng county of Shangdong. It is said his offsprings all became officials, and nine generations of the same family lived under the same roof, which was a much-told story at that time. By these two wooden sculpts in the back hall, the host means to tell his offsprings to be filial, and wishes himself to enjoy a big family, a good fortune and a long life.
On the left hand of the back hall, traveler can see the place for entertainment of that time: Paishan (mountaining removing) House and Tunyun (cloud swallowing) House. Paishan (mountaining removing) House is for playing mah-jong, and gets name from the noise like removing mountains that people make when playing; Tunyun (cloud swallowing) House, as its name suggests, is for people to take opium. Traveler can see from the above information the extravagant life of gaiety the host enjoyed after making fortune. On the left hand of the House is a private garden, with terraces, pavilions, ponds, flowers and plants, ——a truly absorbing place for one to nurture his temperament. There is only a part of it left since the government has made use of the garden after the Liberation.
There is still something special: the consummate design and overall arrangement. Inside the gate, there is a corridor for parking the sedan chairs in the rectangular court; on both sides of the corridor are the dorms for the safeguards and male servants. Worth mentioning is the wooden plank added inside the exterior wall, looking pleasant (similar to the modern wall skirt), as well as against thefts, ——for if anybody digs the wall deep at night and touch the plank, there will be noises souding like the alarm, and safeguards and male servants living in the front court can get ready for catching the thief.
On the left hand of the front court are the studies for the childes and young ladies; while on the right is the specially designed triangular spacial “pound hall”, which is for the family to enjoy their leisure time as well as a bedroom for the chamberlain. On the side of the pound there are the backrests for the ladies, where people lean against when viewing the fish and appreciating the stone sculpture “The Four Joys & The Plum”. The side hall is on the leaft hand of the front hall, where traveler can see the subtlety in design——in case that any guest comes and the host has no spare time, the guest can have a rest and some tea in the side hall at first; on the right hand of the front hall is the well and the bedrooms for the female servants.
Resplendent and outstanding, the Ieadl-Upholding Hall can truly be called an architectural masterpiece, especially its wooden sculpts, most of which are very complicated with many characters, and gold powder spreaded upon the surface, making them seem very magnificent, obtaining even the praises of experts from the Forbidden City Museum, who said that they had not such treasure even in the Forbidden City, the assemblage of the elite architecture in ancient China. This is not to say that the imperial power and wealth are inferior to those of Wang Dinggui, but the fact that in the wooden sculpts of the Forbidden City people scarcely see anything else except for the dragon and the phoenix, since the emperors, deeming themselves as the supreme, would not allow together with them the existence of any other images superior. |
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