Liu's Ancestral Hall: Ganzhou The only remaining ancestral hall in the city
The Liu's Ancestral Hall is located in the Ou Tangli area of Jiefang Street. It is the Liu's Ancestral Hall built by the Liu clan in the late Qing Dynasty.
The existence of the Liu Family Ancestral Hall, which dates back to the Qing Dynasty, is due to its cultural relic significance. "Two rivers flow around it, and three mountains stand out. It is majestic and majestic, moving people to look at it. The outstanding people and places continue to resemble each other." This is a tribute to the Liu family ancestral hall located in Ou Pond in Qiancheng. The ancient building is now listed as a cultural relic protection unit in Ganzhou City.
The Liu Family Ancestral Hall is actually the Liu Family Ancestral Hall in southern Jiangxi. Judging from the conception and format of the ancestral hall, it belongs to the ancient architectural style of integrating ancestral temples and halls. Its large scale, exquisite materials and beautiful craftsmanship were few and far between in Qianzhou City at that time. There is a record in the ancestral inscription excavated by
: "The essence of Zhanggong, the clearness of Kongtong, the towering Mei Temple, and the high towers."
This ancestral hall was planned in the 8th year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty and took ten years of preparation. Juren Liu Anzhuo took advantage of the opportunity to go to Beijing for the major examinations to collect architectural data from various places, especially the architectural styles of ancestral temples in the capital, and discussed with Ganzhou officials and talents in Beijing to draw a blueprint for the construction of the ancestral temple.
In Qiancheng, headed by Liu Anzhuo and Liu Gongchen, he organized a preparatory team of 43 people, mobilized donations of more than silver dollars from both urban and rural areas and more than 10,000 taels, and purchased more than 50 acres of residential land in the west of the city. The construction of the ancestral hall started in April of the fifth year of Guangxu (1879) and was completed in October of the sixth year of Guangxu (1880), with a construction area of 6,000 square meters.
The Liu Family Ancestral Hall is very complete and standardized. "The Ancestral Temple" says: "Everything in the world has its will and success." The Liu family ancestral hall faces north and faces south. Its original appearance is a three-entry hall with a stage built inside the gate. On both sides of the hall are an administrative hall, a sacrificial vessel storehouse, and two corridors with bell and drum towers. The ancestral hall has a small wall, a courtyard, a hanging flower door, a hand-painted verandah, a hall, a ritual door, and a wing room. There are ponds, gardens, pavilions, terraces, buildings and pavilions on the right and in the backyard.
The existing gate is a bracket-style cornice building, which is a unique structure in Chinese architecture. The couplet on the gate reads: "Liuhuan Zhang Gong Xiuzhi and Kongtong are fortunate to have unique mountains and rivers. Shiyan Junzong's family has taken care of the gate because there are descendants." The stage faces the hall and can accommodate thousands of people to watch the play. The pillars have a couplet: "make up the joys and sorrows of separation and joy, and make things happen, and the ethics of performance serve as evidence from the past to the present."
The house is made of centuries-old fir trees as columns, with carved and painted beams and tiles on the eaves, and the roof is richly decorated with vases, stone lions and tripods. The red light of the gems on the roof is still seen today. At that time, it was picturesque with the lotus pond, pond pond and willow cypress near the temple, and the battlements returned it. The couplet said: "The forest ponds in the area are worthy of poetry materials, and the flowers and birds in the four seasons are enough to help the heaven."
Today's urban buildings are diverse and colorful. The Liu family ancestral hall, which is among the modern atmosphere of this city, is obviously not as beautiful as contemporary high-rise buildings. All it has is some classical flavor for educated people to smell.
Although the Liu Family Ancestral Hall now looks dilapidated, and some walls are even in danger of being broken, the finely carved cornices and brackets still show the artistic beauty created by craftsmen back then to the sky and the land. The majestic bluestone gate still flaunts an ancient pride to guests; the square courtyard deep in the house still stores the joys, sorrows and joys of the Liu clan in those days.
text/Wen Rui, picture/network
