On June 10, 2016, on the eve of China's first "Cultural Heritage Day", the Congxi Gong Ancestral Hall in Chao'an County, together with two other cultural relics attractions in our city, the HanWen Gong Ancestral Hall and the Daoyun Building, was listed by the State Council as the sixth batch of national key cultural relics protection units. This is also the only cultural relics unit in Chao'an County that is currently listed as a national key protection.
Located at the eastern foot of Sangpu Mountain, at the northern end of Meilin Lake, the Xigong Ancestral Hall is a Fudi-style ancestral hall at the oblique corner of Jinsha Village in Caitang Town. From the Xi Gong Ancestral Hall was built by Chen Xunian, a famous overseas Chinese leader living in Malaysia, at great expense, in the ninth year of qing tongzhi (1870) and completed in the ninth year of Guangxu (1884), after 14 years, the construction scale is grand. The temple seat faces east to west, with a width of 31.22 meters and a depth of 42.25 meters, which is a courtyard layout with two entrances and four halls. The front and back halls are centered on a patio. The back hall is three rooms wide and three deep. The ancestral hall is flanked by fire alleys and corridors. The back hall has a holding building, forming a four-hall opposite pattern, the roof is a wooden structure with bucket arch beams, the hall floor is a marble brick of specifications, the ancestral hall roof frame is a marble brick, the ancestral hall and all beams, trusses, are decorated with wood carvings and stone carvings, birds and animals, flowers, birds and trees, the image is vivid, magnificent, showing the essence of Chaozhou wood carving stone carving, has a high artistic value, but also full of Chaozhou regional characteristics.
The most representative of the Ancestral Hall is the stone carving group of the ancestral hall stone gate tower, the entire gate tower is composed of stone carvings, in front of the gate is a pair of stone lions looking forward to the prime minister, there are two smooth and delicate large stone drums on both sides of the main gate, the upper end of the door is a powerful "from the Xi Gong Ancestral Hall" stone plaque, and the stone truss is engraved on both sides of the stone truss with a variety of various kinds of fish, insects, flowers and birds. In particular, the four stone sculptures embedded in the four sides of the belly of the gatehouse, such as Shi Nong, Industrial and Commercial, Fish Tree Cultivation Reading, Hundred Birds and Phoenixes and Flowers, Birds, Fish and Insects, use the composition of the "Zigzag" shape, and use carving techniques such as empty carving, general carving, and skeleton carving to portray the characters, landscapes, flowers and birds in a wonderful and vivid manner, with a strong artistic appeal and perspective impact. In particular, the stone carving "Fish Tree Cultivation Reading" is composed of 23 characters and a bull and two horses, and each character has a different look. The top level of the picture is "reading", a son and a bookboy enter the invigilator together, and on the upper right are three old people playing chess in peace. In the middle, a staircase is connected to the "tree", and the scene of the woodcutter cutting firewood, tying firewood, and carrying firewood appears. Below are "ploughing" and "fishing", shepherd boys riding buffaloes, cattlemen driving buffaloes, and farmers standing on the bridge carrying hoes, two people standing on the shore watching the fishermen in the water cast nets and fish. There are also two children fishing for fish naked, holding the carp in their arms and refusing to let go. In terms of craftsmanship, the fishing net in the fisherman's hand is finely repaired, the mesh is fine, and the hollow carving is extremely difficult. In particular, the shepherd boy sitting on the back of the cow holds the stone cow rope, and the shepherd boy on the back of the cow holds the hollow stone cow rope as thin as a match, which is even more ingenious and breathtaking, which is a must of stone carving art.
Legend has it that this stone ox rope was difficult for many skilled craftsmen at that time. According to Chen Bingzheng, a descendant of chen Xunian's direct lineage of four generations, in order to create these exquisite stone carvings, Chen Xunian specially invited court craftsmen, a total of three generations and five people. Every day, he was served good tea and good cigarettes, and when he was in high spirits, he carved for two hours, but after three years of fighting like this, he still ended in failure. However, Chen Xunian not only did not give up on this, but invited the stonemason back with greater sincerity, doubled the hospitality, and built a house for him in his hometown. In this way, after the painstaking efforts of the craftsmen, this unique stone cow rope was finally created. Unfortunately, this cattle rope painstakingly created by the craftsmen was inadvertently broken during the War of Resistance Against Japan. Later, Chen Lao's descendants asked people to repair it many times, and although it returned to its current shape, it was still far from the original appearance. From the north of xigong temple is the Yangyuan Bookstore, which has garden pavilions, garden rockeries and academies, which is a place for reading and entertainment. The complex is centered on the Seniors. Built around the ancestral hall in chronological order, the XiGong Ancestral Hall is located in the center of the entire complex and has a strong sense of clan.
The ancestral hall is an important place to worship ancestors, and the ancestral hall is also an artistic hall of traditional Chaozhou architecture. The classic ancestral building is naturally full of legendary historical figures. As a representative ancestral hall building in Chaozhou, why its builders spent a full 14 years to integrate various crafts such as gold lacquer wood carving, stone carving, inlaid porcelain, murals, and gray sculptures of Chaozhou folk into one temple, which is closely related to the vision and legendary experience of its builder Chen Xunian.
Nowadays, walking into the middle hall of the Congxi Gong Ancestral Hall, you can see a majestic figure hanging in the middle of the main hall, which is Chen Xunian, the builder of the Congxi Gong Ancestral Hall. Chen Xunian, formerly known as Chen Minyi, was born in 1827 in Jinsha Village, Caitang Town, Chao'an County, with a poor family and great ambitions, because his uncle Chen Yuanshen had no children and passed on, to pick up the burden and go to the countryside to sell oil for a living. In order to develop, at the age of 17, the divisionless Chan Xu Nian ventured into the red-headed boat bound for the Malay Peninsula and came to the country of Johor (now Johor, Malaysia). First, he lived as a laborer, experienced hardships in the world, and was highly praised for his courage and integrity; later, he was engaged in cloth trafficking, business was fair, and he made good friends. In Singapore, Chen Xunian not only became acquainted with the Plenipotentiary of Johor in Singapore at that time, Ibrahim Ibrahim and his son Abkhaka, but also became brothers with Abhaka and married his cousin. In 1864, Ibrahim returned to Johor Bahru and was enthroned as Sultan of Johor Bahru, and Chen Xunian also moved to Johor Bahru and obtained jurisdiction over the first to tenth port in Johor. Pepper and sweet potatoes are also grown along the port. At the age of 39, Chen Xunian had become the largest Hong Kong owner in Johor at that time. In 1870, after Abkhaka took over as Sultan, he made Chen Xunian the head of overseas Chinese and was specially awarded the title of prime minister, making his position extremely prominent. Tan Wook Nien contributed to the administration in Johor, and there is now "Tan Wook Nien Street" in Johor Bahru to commemorate his exploits.
In addition to enjoying extensive privileges in Johor, Chan is also highly prestigious in Singapore and has a lot of real estate. Near Narcissus Gate and Mount Royal (now Singapore's Central Park), there are four stores in Guangfeng, Yifeng, Yilong and Humble, which deal in pepper and sweet, and make huge profits. In that year, Chen Xunian built the Congxi Gong Ancestral Hall in his hometown of Chao'an. In 1885, he also built a mansion in Singapore at the junction of Penang Road and Deng Road, which looked similar to his hometown. In 1900, because the Railway Bureau laid the railway behind the Senior Administration, the elderly Chen Xunian felt that the train was too noisy when it passed, so he sold the mansion to the government and returned to his hometown in Chaozhou to grow old. According to recent Singapore media reports, Chen Xunian built this senior government building in Singapore that year, after more than a hundred years of silence, because the University of Chicago School of Business Studies in the United States set up a branch school in this Chinese-style century-old mansion, which once again attracted widespread attention from the local society. It is said that Singapore later printed a stamp specifically on the appearance of the SeniorIty.
Although Chen Xunian left his hometown since he was a child, he was deeply influenced by traditional culture and had a strong patriotic complex. After his entrepreneurial success, he saw that foreign powers invaded China on a large scale, so he resolutely donated a huge amount of money to the construction of the Beiyang Marine Division at that time. According to the elderly Chen Bingzheng, who was directly from Chen Xunian for four generations, at that time, Chen Xunian had contacts with Li Hongzhang, one of the main figures of the foreign affairs movement. In addition, he donated huge sums of money to the Qing government to relieve the victims of the disaster, so he was praised by the Qing government. Secondly, Zi Rui (三點水加彤) was also promoted to the main hall of Kangfu in southwest Jiangxi. When he went to the post, he also brought a large amount of silver dollars to relieve the local disaster victims, unfortunately, the second Zi Rui (three points of water jiatong) only took charge of 99 days in The Kang Province in southwest Jiangxi, and then died of dysentery. Today, to the south of the Congxi Gong Ancestral Hall is the Ruitong Ancestral Hall of Chen Xunxin, the second son of Chen Xunian, the prefect of Jiangxi Nankang, with the inscription "Records of the Taishou Ancestral Hall of Nankang", and the calligraphy carving of the gate tower was made by the calligrapher Mao Chengji of Qiantang (now Hangzhou), Zhejiang Province, in the late Qing Dynasty. On the stone wall of the gate tower, there is still a bang lian sent by the Nankang Province at that time, shanglian: the people are poor and barren, the market is depressed, and it has been a good official for decades, and it is fortunate to be happy in the place. Xia lian: the government is simple and the punishment is light, the defense is serious, the hundred-day illness and the gentleman, what a heavenly way of ignorance.
From the Xigong Ancestral Hall inlaid with porcelain, wood carving, stone carving
"From Xi Gong Ancestral Hall and Chen Xu Nian" is an article published by me in Chaozhou Daily on August 30, 2006, and it has been exactly ten years since then. Recently, Chaozhou is vigorously advocating the spirit of "red head boat" and "a cow rope", and the municipal party committee and municipal government have also proposed to compose a "phoenix legend" and achieve "phoenix take-off", in order to carry forward the entrepreneurial spirit of the hipsters to forge ahead and work hard, I think this idea will not become obsolete at any time. Because there are many People in Chaozhou and little land, in the past, in order to develop, many Hipsters had to leave their hometowns and take the "red-headed boat" to go out to make a living. There are great risks in going out on a red-headed boat to make a living, and the chances of success are very slim; but in order to survive and develop, many hipsters risk their lives and rush to hope. This is the "red-headed boat" spirit of Teochew people who are not afraid of difficulties and dare to work hard, which is also a valuable spiritual wealth of Teochew people.
The "red-headed boat" is to record the footprints of the development of the hipsters, and it is also a spiritual link connecting the hipsters at home and abroad. Many hipsters who take the "red-headed boat" to go out to start a business, after the success of their careers, they always do not forget their homeland and do not forget to return to their hometown. Chen Xunian, the builder of the Xigong Ancestral Hall, is one of the outstanding representatives. After the success of his career, the visionary construction of the "Congxi Gong Ancestral Hall" added a national cultural relics protection unit to Chaozhou a hundred years later, which is not the best witness to the spirit of Chaozhou's "red-headed ship" and "one year rope"? (Photo: Chen Qiuxiao)