Ancient buildings in Dangjia Village

Ancient buildings in Dangjia Village

DangJiaCun ancient building complex, located in Xizhuang Town, Hancheng City, Shaanxi Province, is located on the slope between water and tableland. It was first built in 1331 and named dongyangwan. In 1364, it was renamed dangjiawan and later called DangJiaCun.

Dangjia Village's ancient building complex was expanded in 1414, the 12th year of Yongle in Ming Dynasty. Changmen, Ermen and Sanmen residential areas and development areas were demarcated. In Qing Dynasty, it continued to be repaired and expanded. In order to defend against bandits, Shangzhai Qinyang fort was built. The main residents are people with the surnames of Dang and Jia.

Historical origin

The structure of Dangjia Village is composed of laneways: the main laneway runs through the village from east to west, and the secondary laneway and end laneway are connected with the main laneway, which conforms to the drainage direction of the terrain. The roadway ground is all stone coated, with concave section, which is shared by traffic and drainage. According to Fengshui theory, the layout of roadway and courtyard is "covered by streets and alleys as water theory", which adopts the way of "lane is not lane", "door is not door", and a water entrance is set at the entrance of the village.

Dangjia Village is an ancient building complex. The existing residential complex is composed of villages and castles, with a total of more than 120 houses (including 12 ancestral temples) and nearly 1000 houses, all of which are quadrangles.

The ancient buildings in Dangjia Village mainly include: Tower (7-level and 6-sided Wenxing Pagoda with a height of 40 meters), stele, building, roadway, ancestral hall, house, etc., as well as the village wall built in the late Qing Dynasty and a watchhouse building used for guarding in the village. Architectural art includes a large number of exquisite wood carvings, brick carvings, stone carvings and inscriptions. The village is a well preserved and representative traditional village in Hancheng area.

Related allusions

In the second year of the Yuan Dynasty (1331 AD), Dang Shuxuan, the ancestor of the Dang family, fled from the wasteland and settled here. Shuxuan married a fan's daughter from a neighboring village and had four sons. Except for the fourth son, Junming, who went to Hezhou in Gansu Province to "tuntian", the eldest son, Junxian, was the eldest, the second son, Junren, and the third son, Junyi, was the third. They are all thriving and have been handed down for 25 generations.

At the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, Jia Botong, the ancestor of Jia nationality, moved to Hancheng from Hongdong, Shanxi Province, and first lived in the county and Jia village. In the fifth generation, Jia Lian married a girl with the surname of Dang and gave birth to a son, Jia Zhang. In the fourth year of Jiajing reign of Ming Dynasty (1525 AD), Jia Zhang settled down in Dangjia Village with his nephew and uncle's relatives, and established his family and business. They still regard Botong as their ancestor, and their descendants have multiplied up to now, which has been handed down to 24 generations. From the perspective of "generation", the sixth generation of Jia's surname is equivalent to the seventh generation of the party's surname, and they are brothers to each other, and they have not been disordered until now.

In the early Qing Dynasty, the two surnames of Dangjia in Dangjia Village were divided into several places to do business in the Tang and Baihe River basins at the junction of Henan and Hubei. Because we can seize the opportunity and operate well, we have achieved great success. The three dynasties of Jiaqing, Daoguang and Xianfeng are the golden age in the economic history of Dangjia Village. It is said that the escort carrying silver to his hometown came to Dao in an endless stream, which is known as "entering silver thousand Liang every day". At the same time, Dangjia Village turned over the old and built the new, and entered a climax period of building quadrangles that lasted for a hundred years, with ancestral halls, temples, Wenxing Pavilion and other supporting buildings built together. In the early years of Xianfeng, the village raised funds to build Biyang fort, and built dozens of quadrangles in the fort. So far, Dangjia Village is famous for its wealth and nice houses.

Special report

However, it is the joint efforts of Xi'an Institute of metallurgy and architecture and Kyushu University that make DangJiaCun famous both at home and abroad. In 1986, they jointly organized a group here to conduct two in-depth and detailed investigations. In 1991, Professor Masao Aoki, head of the Japanese side of the regiment, wrote the book "Dangjia Village" in Japanese. It marks the rediscovery of Dangjia Village. After that, special reports were made one after another in all levels of writing, film and television, which made Dangjia Village as famous as it is today.

During the three years of natural disasters and the "Cultural Revolution", quite a number of halls, sentry gates and theatres in the village were demolished and sold, resulting in irreparable losses. Fortunately, in the upsurge of rural housing construction brought about by the reform and opening up, Dangjia Village has adopted the practice of preserving the ancient appearance of the ancient village and creating a new village. The existing more than 100 quadrangles and ancestral halls, Wenxing Pavilion, Jiexiao stele, watchhouse building and Biyang Fort have been protected by the state as rare cultural relics and opened to China and foreign countries.

Today, the people of Dangjia Village still live and work in this ancient courtyard, and they are warmly welcoming tourists from home and abroad every day.

Architectural features

The courtyard houses in Hancheng are all over the urban and rural areas. Dangjia Village is a typical traditional residential village in northern China. Experts at home and abroad praised it as "the treasure of folk houses" and "the living fossil of Oriental human living villages", and now it is a national protection unit.

Most of Dangjia villages are surnamed Dang and Jia. Because Dangjia lived in Zao, it is called Dangjia (JIA) village. Dangjia Village is located in Xizhuang Town, 9 kilometers northeast of the city, covering an area of 16.5 hectares. Founded in 1331, the village is located in the East-West gourd shaped valley with more than 330 households and 1400 people. During the Chenghua period of Ming Dynasty, the two surnames of Dang and Jia got married and went into business in partnership, which made them prosperous and became local tycoons and rich families. In the first year of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty (1851), the fort was built in the Northeast highland of the village, making the village connected and connected.

There are 123 courtyard and 321 block existing siheyuan. Dangjia Village has a long history of dwellings, with proper site selection, excellent buildings, rich connotation, villages and villages, complete group protection, complete public facilities and safe refuge and defense. There are pagodas, ancestral halls, private schools, steles of filial piety, watchtower, secret passage, sentry gate tower, temple, old pool, ancient well, powder magazine and other public buildings and unique buildings in the village.

More than 20 roadways in the village are connected in a comprehensive vertical and horizontal way, with clear primary and secondary. All the roads are paved with stones or pebbles, which is antique and unique.

Layout structure

Each courtyard generally covers an area of about 260 square meters, rectangular, individual is square, commonly known as "a seal". The courtyard is surrounded by hall, left and right wing rooms and gatehouse. The hall is the head, the wing is the arms, and the porter is the foot. The hall is large and spacious. The front eaves are mostly resting eaves, which are used as a place for ancestor worship and banquet. When weddings and funerals occur, the movable screen doors are removed, and the banquet is set up. Obviously, the function of the hall facilities is brought into play. The porter and the wing room are the living rooms, and the elder brothers live in order. Walking into Dangjia Village, the tall and imposing "zouma gatehouse" is listed on both sides of the roadway. The architectural decoration is very exquisite, simple and exquisite, and the three sculptures are complete. It is a collection of sculpture art. Outside the house there are horse stones, horse posts and horse rings. The door pillow is square or drum type, both of which are stone carvings. There are Shizi gate pier, Guer gate pier, Shizi and Guer gate pier, as well as simple upright double body line carving gate pier. In particular, the lion gate pier, whether rough and simple or carved, can make this beast vivid and lifelike. There are beautiful brick carvings on both sides of the gate tower, which are very rich in content, such as Qin, Qi, calligraphy and painting, plum orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum, deer, rabbit, elephant and horse, tiger, ox and unicorn, as well as geometric patterns, wanziguai, eight diagrams, etc. The most striking is the inscription on the forehead of the gate, which almost every family has. From the content point of view, there are three categories: dazzle the ancestors, ethics and ideal pursuit. The interior walls of the gate are mostly brick carvings with various themes, such as "deer and crane in the same spring", "seal (bee) and Hou (monkey)" and "five blessings (bats) holding longevity" and so on, while some have a big "blessing" or "longevity". The brick carvings in the courtyard are mostly on the gables on both sides of the eaves of the hall. The contents are mostly moral cultivation and so on. The cultural atmosphere is strong. Like this, the living space of real life is extended to people's spiritual world. It not only beautifies the architectural space, but also has the function of educating generations across time and space. These architectural arts, reflecting the traditional Chinese architecture, are the fusion of literature, morality and aesthetics, condensing a kind of potential rural cultural strength, and are the civilized achievements created by the working people in architectural decoration.

The watchhouse in the village is a brick three story Pavilion, 14.5 meters high. It looks around the village and is a watchtower of defense facilities. Xiaobeilou is carved in imitation of wood brick. It is a representative work of brick carving in Dangjia Village. In the southeast of the village, there is wenxingge Fengshui tower, which was built in 1725. It is a six story hexagonal tower with a height of 37.5 meters. There are brick plaques on the inside and outside of each layer of the tower. From the content, we can know how the people of Dangjia Village skillfully use the Fengshui tower to express more humanistic connotation and place a life ideal of "self-cultivation and family management". After the economic prosperity of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Dangjia Village not only carried out large-scale construction, but also pursued the improvement of culture. There were 5 Jinshi and 44 scholars in the whole village in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and almost half of the households gained fame. With the discovery of the ancient dwellings in Dangjia Village, experts and scholars from China and Japan read out the articles on the investigation of Dangjia Village at the UNESCO conference, which caused experts and scholars from home and abroad to come here for investigation. Relevant architectural experts from China and Japan compiled the monographs of Dangjia Village, a traditional rural village in northern China, and Hancheng village and Dangjia Village. It can be said that "the buildings of yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties are yaogaobao, and experts from Europe, Asia and the United States praise ancient villages.".

Independent courtyard

The courtyard in Dangjia Village is generally an independent courtyard, covering about four parts of the land. Although there are some with backyard and partial courtyard, the number is small. Both the upper hall and the lower gatehouse occupy the horizontal part of the foundation. The wing rooms on both sides are embedded between them, and the courtyard in the middle is narrow. Most of the eaves water on the front slope of the hall door first flows into the gable of the wing room and is used as bricks

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