Daqitou ancient village

Daqitou ancient village, originally named DAQIAOTOU, was founded in the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty. Most of the houses in the village were built in the Qing Dynasty. There are about 200 houses, including village houses, ancestral halls, family temples, second house, Wenta, Sunping, square and pond. It is a typical "guguo'er house group" in the late Qing Dynasty. Daqitou village is also called Zheng Village. Most of the residents in the village are surnamed Zheng. It was first built by Zheng Shaozhong, the commander of Guangdong Navy in the Qing Dynasty. There are many alleys and houses in the village. Walking in the alleys of the ancient village, the decaying courtyard walls, houses covered with green bricks, uninhabited empty houses without care are particularly desolate. Although the scenery of the past is no longer there, you can still feel it from those old and mottled buildings To the old prosperity of the ancient village.

Daqitou ancient village

Daqitou ancient village is located in Leping Town, Sanshui District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province. It is a building complex with ancestral temple and family temple. Founded in 1526, it covers an area of 52000 square meters and a construction area of more than 14000 square meters.

Basic information

Ancient Guoer, Daqitou village, Sanshui

Daqitou village of Wuqun, also known as Zheng Village, was founded in the Jiajing period of Ming Dynasty, formerly known as DAQIAOTOU. It is a typical Qing Dynasty Village with the most unique architectural style in central Guangdong. It is said that the ancient village was built by Zheng Shaozhong, the commander of Guangdong Navy in the Qing Dynasty. It is well preserved and has been designated as a provincial cultural relic protection unit. The village is a ancestral hall, which has both family and temple. The interior layout adopts the typical "three rooms and two corridors" style of Guangdong folk houses. In front of the temple, there is a square expansion. The expansion base is built with a stone ridge, and the protruding part is shaped like a kettle mouth. On the side of the expansion, there is a pen shaped ancient pagoda, Wenta. Under the pagoda, there are two square stones. The big one is about three feet high, like inkstone, and the small one is shaped like a seal. It forms an obvious humanistic landscape of "four treasures of the study", hoping that future generations will "study and be officials".

Historical precipitation

Origin of village name

Daqitou village is located 28 kilometers northeast of southwest town, Sanshui District, Foshan City and 2 kilometers northwest of Leping Town. According to the elders of the village surnamed Zhong, in the early Ming Dynasty, the ancestor of Zhong, Fu'an Gong, moved from Nanpu village in Nanhai. In the 5th year of Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty, kangtaigong, the Kaiji ancestor of the Zheng family (the 10th ancestor of the Zheng family in Sanshui county), moved here from jueshe village. There are three kinds of opinions about who came here to settle down early. First, the ancestor of Zhong family was the first to set ducks for a living and chose water to live there. After driving the ducks here, he found that the water and grass in the area were rich and the river branches were crisscross, which was very conducive to duck breeding. So he chose the place to build houses and settled down. He was the first settler in Daqitou. The argument for this is that the distribution of the villagers surnamed Zhong is mainly concentrated in the north of the village with higher terrain. According to the general reasoning, the people who lived in the highest position in the village should be the first to settle down here, because the Pearl River Delta area is low-lying, with dense water network, and the village is extremely vulnerable to floods and floods. On the one hand, Zheng Kangtai Gong and Zhong's ancestors made a living by feeding ducks together. When they came here, they felt that the river branches were wide and the water area was rich in water and grass, which was conducive to feeding ducks People decided to settle here. The third way is that Kangtai Gong was the first to settle here.

As for why Kangtai Gong moved here, according to the old people in the village, because jueshe village was too small at that time, and there were too many people in the village. At that time, when the war was in chaos, the original land in the village could not support too many people. Therefore, there were two cousins, Cao Longgong (named Yiyun) and Kangtai Gong (named Daliang), the tenth ancestor of jueshe Zheng, among them, Cao Longgong and jueshe village people Hefeng moved to Qingxin county to settle down. The place was named "Heyun" town after two people, so Yiyun Gong was the ancestor of Zheng family in Heyun town of Qingyuan. Kangtaigong moved to dashaotou village, Sanshui, and became the ancestor of the village. After Kang Tai Gong came to the village, he worked hard, and finally his descendants prospered and the village became a success.

The Ming Dynasty is the period of great reclamation of the Pearl River Delta, and it is also the period when the commodity economy of the Pearl River Delta began to develop. In the Ming Dynasty, there were 22 new counties in Guangdong Province, including Shunde, Sanshui, Xin'an (Bao'an), Xinning (Taishan), Gaoming, Kaiping and Enping counties located in the Pearl River Delta. It can be seen that it was in this background that Zhong and Zheng moved here to pioneer the land, which opened the development history of Daqitou village. Therefore, no matter who first came here, the surnames Zhong and Zheng jointly opened a village and created land, and lived here for generations. Originally, the village was called daaotou because of the bridge built on the river beside the village. After the year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty, after the death of the sixth generation grandson of the surname Zheng, Zheng Shaozhong (formerly the commander of Guangdong Navy, with the title of jiashangshu), he was buried in Laohugang, southwest of the village. Looking from the village, the tomb of Shaozhong was like a big flag. So later generations changed the name of the village to Daqitou. The name of the village has been used to this day.

Built history

At the end of the 19th century, when the country was in great danger, the navy was defeated one after another, and the coastal defense was tight. China set up the most powerful navy in history, the Beiyang Navy, to try to strengthen the country. However, in the critical period of military construction, Empress Dowager Cixi instructed the navy to spend money to rebuild the summer palace. In 1891, it was declared "completed". Two years ago, when Zheng Shaozhong's mother passed away, he began to build a private house in Daqitou village, Sanshui City, Foshan City, Guangdong Province. It is said that the money for Zheng Shaozhong's private house was also allocated by Empress Dowager Cixi. Empress Dowager Cixi was not only concerned about her royal garden, but also about the minister's house. After hearing that the minister did not have a decent home in her hometown, she ordered the Treasury to allocate money for the construction. Just after the completion of the mansion, Zheng Shaozhong fell ill in the position of commander in chief of the Navy and soon died. Today, it has become a representative of Lingnan architecture and one of the first batch of famous historical and cultural villages in China.

Village changes

The changes of Daqitou village can be divided into four stages

The first stage (in the early Ming Dynasty, the ancestors of Zhong and Zheng kaicun moved to daaotou to settle down and start a business - in the second year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty, ZHENG Jin surrendered to the Qing government) belongs to the initial period of Daqitou village. During this period, the population of the village was small, and the largest number was only about 40 households. The spatial form of the village showed that the surname Zheng was mainly distributed in the southwest of the village, and the surname Zhong was distributed in the north of the village. The two surnames are independent, but they cooperate in village affairs, such as resisting bandits and resolving disputes between the two surnames. According to Zheng Xun Hou (now living in Australia), a descendant of Zheng Shaozhong, there was an ancient imperial temple built in the early years between the East and north directions of the village. The main function of the temple was to serve as a negotiation place for the two surnames Zheng and Zhong in the village to settle disputes. The number of people with two surnames is also roughly the same.

In the second stage (from the second year of Tongzhi to the end of the Republic of China in 1949), Zheng Shaozhong, a descendant of the Zheng family in Daqitou, rebuilt the whole village in an all-round way. It is said that Zheng Shaozhong returned to his hometown because of his filial piety and began to prepare to rebuild his private house. However, his initial motion did not get the active cooperation of the leader of the Zheng clan, Fang Yuren (the eldest son of Kangtai duke). Originally, Zheng Shaozhong planned to rebuild the whole area of the Zheng family in the village. Due to the resistance of the leader's branch (Yuren branch), his idea did not come true, so he had to rebuild it The key area of Zao concentrated on the east area where his own branch (Sanfang Yuli branch, the third son of Kangtai Gong) was located. At that time, he was already the commander-in-chief of Guangdong Navy, ranking first, and was very popular in the countryside. Therefore, in the process of reconstruction, Zheng Shaozhong intentionally highlighted the status and power of sanfangzhi. The layout of the whole building complex is centered on Zheng's ancestral hall, and its own book of history is built next to the ancestral hall. On the one hand, it highlights the importance of its status, on the other hand, it also highlights Zheng Shaozhong's filial piety, so as to show that he will always be with his ancestors. Zheng Shaozhong also distinguishes the orientation and level of the building from other branches of the Zheng family and the settlements of the villagers of the Zhong family (see Fig. 1-1 and Fig. 1-6). It can be seen from the picture that the orientation of the residential buildings in other parts of the village is northeast southwest and northwest southeast, while the orientation of the buildings built by Zheng Shaozhong is positive east-west, and the residential buildings face east, which means "Ziqi comes from the East". Professional designers (Feng Shui Division) were employed to survey and design the buildings. The buildings were oriented to the East and the South and the north, which formed a neat layout of the village. At the same time, combined with the spatial orientation of the whole village, it highlights Zheng Shaozhong's achievements in the army and his general image of killing the enemy in the battlefield. The architectural community in the village takes defending the enemy as the basic idea, and strengthens the defense of the core part, the residence of Zheng Shaozhong and his immediate descendants. The whole village not only embodies the formal beauty of military camp regulation, but also reflects the practical function of village defense. This period is the most rapid development period of Daqitou village, but also the most perfect period of the overall form, structure and function of the village. After Zheng Shaozhong, the two clansmen of Zheng Zhong in the village further improved the construction of the village, and finally formed a magnificent village with an area of more than 50000 square meters.

The third stage (after the founding of the people's Republic of China - around 1980) after the founding of the people's Republic of China, the house branch family of Zheng Shaozhong in Daqitou was regarded as the reactionary landlord class, and the ancient architectural community of Zheng Shaozhong was called the landlord manor by the Chinese Department of Sun Yat sen University at that time. It was the "Ningguo mansion" and "Rongguo mansion" in Guangdong, and wrote the "investigation of ZHENG Jin landlord manor in Daqitou village, Sanshui county". With a series of revolutionary mass movements and proletarian dictatorship movements, such as land reform, breaking through the four old systems, three evils and five evils, overthrowing the Kong clan, cultural revolution, etc., the historical relics of Daqitou village, especially the family temples, ancestral halls, government houses and Wenta, have suffered a devastating blow. All kinds of memorial buildings built around Zheng Shaozhong and his clan were either severely damaged or used for other purposes. Jianweidi was once used as a classroom and activity in Daqitou primary school

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