In the far east of Jiangxi Province, at the junction of Fujian, Zhejiang and Gansu provinces, there is a deep hidden mountain
The surrounding ancient village, Shidu Village, is beautiful and ancient, from north to south, more than 100 ancient buildings of the Ming, Qing and Republic of China are arranged in turn. In these complexes, there is a single-storey brick and wood structure of the house, covering an area of more than 40 acres, with a construction area of 6780 square meters, 108 rooms, 36 patios, and 3 fish ponds. Both sides of the big house are equipped with Wangyue Tower, Chicken Coop, Large Vegetable Garden and 500 square meters courtyard-style station, outside the house into the clear stream around the house, hall, hall, lane, room, corridor, building, courtyard layout is staggered, in more than 200 years of wind and rain is still outstanding, regardless of the scale of the building, or the grade, can be called the southern residential building of the set of the master, exquisite and elegant design, showing the "noble and not expensive, expensive and elegant, not expensive and delicate" characteristics of the residential, known as "China's first private house".
This is the Ten Capitals House, which is named after the place. Because the builder's surname is Wang, it is also known as the Ten Capitals Royal Family Compound.
Childhood memories are always related to this quaint old house, and those days of toddlers, teeth and teeth, laughter and scolding, chasing and fighting can always easily ripple in the circle of my distant memory. Today, when I wandered through this old house again, I began to read the big house with reverence. After the age of Aifu, I gradually understood that it is not only a big house, but also a beautiful picture like a peach blossom source, the palm of an ancient sage legend, a precious wealth that has been preserved, and a monument left behind by the owner of the house, allowing us to see their ambitions, pursuits, and like an open book, silently telling the legendary story of what happened in this big house...
Wang Zhaoming (1635-1715), a native of Peijiadi, Bao'an Township, Jiangshan City, Zhejiang Province, was a member of the Jinchuan Wang clan of Xujiang. In the eighteenth year of Shunzhi (1661), it moved to Linggen, Shidu Village, Guangfeng County, Jiangxi Province. In the fifty-ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1720), Wang Zhaoming's son Wang Yihui (1673-1747), Whose family moved from Linggen to Shidu Village, was the ancestor of the Wang clan of Shidu Dawu. Wang Yihui married two wives, had three sons and two daughters, the eldest son Zhen Wending, middle-aged martyrdom, no queen; the second son Wang Qiyuan (1706-1785), Zhen Guokui, Mei Feng, had two sons and three, Peilan; the youngest son Wang Weiping (1723-1794), Zhen Guohan, No. Leiting, commissioned Jizhou Yongning County SiXun and Yongxin Wan'an Second County Sixun. He had a son, Wang Jixian (1746-1804), who was given the title of Ru Lin Lang (儒林郎). The three generations of the Wang family's ancestors and grandchildren were also officials and merchants at the same time, because of the "strict management of the family and good morality", the assets gradually became stronger, and in the middle of the Qianlong period, entered the heyday, became a rich merchant, and bought a large number of fields, mountains, real estate, shops, etc. Wang Yihui's sons Wang Qiyuan and Wang Weiping, as well as his grandsons Wang Jiansan, Wang Jixian, and Wang Peilan, developed into well-known and prestigious families engaged in business and agriculture, with property all over the Eight Capitals, Nine Capitals, Ten Capitals, Eleven Capitals and other Luocheng Mountains and County North Street. After the Wang family's founding, they built a large number of buildings, gardens, ancestral halls, archways, tombs, and flagpole courtyards, which lasted for more than half a century from the middle of the Qianlong period to the Jiaqing period. The most typical representative of this is the Wang family house built by Wang Jixian and his father Wang Weiping. Wang Jixian "read and governed the family and was able to live in the world", and successively married four wives of the Liu, Zhan, Tao, and Lu clans, but the heavens were unpredictable, and the four wives gave birth to two sons, Shou En, and Rong En, and only one daughter was left. Therefore, his brother-in-law Gongsheng Jiang Ke wrote on his epitaph: "Huawu has long been abandoned, and Mercy has donated to himself." Si Qin has white hair, acacia and yellow spring. Bai Shou He has no heirs, and Ran Geng has not lived forever. He will also meditate on the reason, and ask the heavens." Later, his cousin Wang Jiansan (王加三) passed on his second son Wang Jiesheng (王杰升) and his cousin Wang Peilan (王配蘭) to Wang Jixian (王淡灵), inheriting his family business and continuing his incense, and his descendants were able to reproduce. Wang Quanluo, Wang Quansheng, Wang Quanqing, Wang Quanquan, and Wang Zilong, who now live in the big house, are all his eighth generation of descendants.
After the Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty, the Wang family began to gradually decline, and the big houses also experienced a trajectory from large to small, from more to less, from simplicity to decay, and many buildings such as the back hall gate, the chicken coop, and the large vegetable garden have disappeared in the long river of history.
Wealth is like a floating cloud, and it has long been gone. The Great House is a vivid animation engraved with the rise and fall of China's modern history. But to shake off the dust of history and imagine the glory of that year, the scale of the Ten Capital Houses, the exquisite construction, and the ingenious layout, as an ordinary house, it cannot but be said to be an amazing miracle!
Two
Walk into the territory of Shidu Village, Songfeng Township, Guangfeng District, walk across an ancient bridge, cobblestone paved laneway, long and deep. At the end of the road, an ancient and simple gate appeared in front of him. A piece of patterned wood carving is carved on the left and right beams of the porch, which cleverly implies the words "opening the door", which conveys the owner's beautiful wishes. The entrance hall of the large house is frugal and introverted, while the central hall and the master bedroom are exquisitely decorated, the library hall and the official hall are made of huge materials, and the official hall is three halls and two horizontal houses, and the library hall, the front patio, the official hall (also known as the quadrangle hall), the rear patio and the back hall are arranged symmetrically along the central axis from south to north, and eighteen boxes are symmetrically arranged on both sides.
The gate of the Ten Capital House, sitting south to north, is simple and introverted, and the exquisite carving of the inner courtyard of the inner hall is extremely out of proportion, and countless tourists will not understand its mystery. Judging from the topography of Shidu Ancient Village, the two rivers of Daxi and Houxi pass through the village from south to north, which belongs to the boat-shaped terrain in feng shui, and sitting south to north is a typical flowing water direction, which is a taboo in the direction of houses. Because of this, among the many ancient buildings in the ancient villages of Shidu, and even in modern and modern buildings, none of the houses sit south to north. Judging from the builder's requirements and wisdom on the design of the house and the pattern of feng shui, it is not difficult to see that he cannot be unaware of this truth. This can only explain one truth: this is not the main gate of the Royal Family House! There is a saying that this place is called "Houtang Gate", and the real "Qiantang Gate" is on the left side of the front of this door, sitting west to east, which is an old house left by Wang Jixian and Wang Peilan's grandfather Wang Yihui. The newly built large house is designed to be connected with the old house as a whole, and the gate of the old house is rebuilt, so that the big house is more magnificent and brilliant. Unexpectedly, during the construction of the big house, Wang Jixian's only son accidentally fell into the lotus pond on the west side of the house and drowned. Wang Jixian was devastated and fell ill. Later, his cousin Wang Jiansan passed on his eldest son Wang Pengling from his second son Wang Jiesheng and cousin Wang Peilan to Wang Jixian, but the construction of the big house was shelved, and the reconstruction of the gate could not be discussed. After Wang Jixian died of illness, his son changed the side gate into the current main gate. Nowadays, from the architectural structure and technological level of the whole big house, it is not difficult to see the traces of the late construction of the big house. Another theory is that the builder of the big house was moved by the Zhejiang people, and its building is in the Zhejiang style, while the Zhejiang school building has a plan tortuous direction, the gate is not on the vertical axis, generally biased to the southeast or southwest, and then make a shadow wall to make people enter and exit the route, the purpose is not to let outsiders see the activities inside the residence, strengthen privacy. In addition, Taoism talks about feng shui and believes in ghosts and gods, and it is also a reason that demons will only go straight and will not turn. In addition, where the central axis is obvious in the deep house compound, the entrance hall, hall, and inner house are arranged in a straight line, and the middle of the row of screen doors behind the hall must be closed, and people can only walk out from the left and right sides. The contradiction between the three religions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism is also reflected in the type system of the Ten Capital Houses. The insoluble mystery of the gate is like a wordless book, waiting for people to dig and explore, waiting for experts, scholars and travel enthusiasts from all over the world to come and reveal the secret...
Three
The big house takes the luxury and practicality of the Zhejiang school as the bulk, the fine carving of the Hui school as the mainstream, the unique layout of the Gan school structure and the delicate interior, taking into account the spaciousness, simplicity and practicality of the Fujian school, which constitutes the unique architectural characteristics of the four winds. Judging from the structural architecture of the big house, the whole house embodies the confucian ideology of "left is up, south is yang" and the Taoist idea of "left green dragon right white tiger before suzaku and after Xuanwu". The main rooms and boxes on the left and right sides of the hall house on the vertical axis are inhabited by the elders; the courtyards on the horizontal axis and the main rooms and boxes on both sides are inhabited by the younger generations, showing the ethics and morality of traditional Chinese culture - the order of the three principles and five constants. Yes, when the wheel of history rolls away those old and pedantic things, traditional cultural customs and human warmth are still cultivating the people of Shidu Village. For more than 200 years, the people of Shidu Village have built up their families in etiquette, are simple and generous, pass on their families with loyalty and filial piety, forgiveness, and do good deeds in hardships and hardships, and their ancestors and grandchildren have paid attention to filial piety to their parents, brothers, and neighbors, and have rich historical precipitation and ancient style in the customs and customs.
The large eaves corridors are connected, the buildings are connected, and no matter where you go, you can't get out of the courtyard where the houses are connected. Staying here, you will truly appreciate what it means to be "sunny and not exposed to the sun, rain and not wet shoes". Look at the small patio in the house, but its role is very large. It not only solves the problem of lighting and ventilation, but also through the underground pipes, forming an efficient drainage system. In fact, in the big house, except for the small drainage hole in the patio, there is no drainage pipe. The underground invisible waterways with moderate level and no omissions have created a miracle in the history of traditional residential architecture in China. Historically, the Ten Capitals House has suffered countless floods, but the underground drainage facilities hidden in the Big House have never been blocked into disasters, and the cleverness is incomprehensible. It is said that when the house was built, a turtle was placed in the drainage channel, and the crawling of the turtle was used to dredge and clean the sludge and accumulation in the pipe. If so, are these long-lived turtle grandfathers still here? This pioneering use of biological methods to assist construction projects can be described as ingenious. In 1982, Professor Wu Guangzu, director of the Department of Architecture of Tongji University in Shanghai, and other expert groups came to inspect many times and gave the Shidu Dawu a high evaluation, believing that "each building of the Shidu Dawu was the carrier of social politics, economy and culture at that time, and it was extremely precious."
The most brilliant thing about the big house is that the whole house uses only one mortise and tenon. Beams and beams, columns and columns, bucket arches and bucket arches, but without a single nail, all tenon structure, this careful calculation and interspersing, it is breathtaking. It is said that the main carpenter used only one main mortise and tenon to connect the whole house together, as long as the main mortise was removed, the beams, columns, and arches of the whole house could be decomposed in turn, but no one has found this main mortise. Where is the master mortise? It's a mystery that no one knows.
The Big House also has a mysterious legend that people talk about. The big houses are wooden structures, and mountain residents have been grilling three meals a day with firewood, but there has not been a single major fire here for more than 200 years. During the Republic of China period, a lightning bolt fell on the library of the big house, knocking down half of the first pillar on the left side of the library. Curiously, the other half of the pillars were intact and did not burn, and the large house was not damaged. The half of the columns that remained were not replaced until now when they are repaired. It used to be said that a neighbor had burned the family's belongings with firewood, but the wooden walls were intact. Some people say that this is the treasure of the big house - the rod is working, as long as the cane is there, the big house is safe. The rod is a special tool designed by ancient architects, usually a flat wooden pole with a length of 1.86 zhang, and two size series are engraved on the front and back sides, with 1.8 feet, 3.6 feet, 6.4 feet to 1.86 zhang as the degree, all yin and yang auspicious sizes, wealth, illness, separation, righteousness, official, robbery, harm, and ben are all engraved in it. These digital series are the main control dimensions of the residential design. The basic dimensions of the house design fall on the pole, and after the pole is designed, a building is designed. Today, this precious rod is still intact and well-protected in the big house. The magic is much more than that. In the Ten Capitals House, you rarely see spider webs and spiders. It is said that the owner of the house was bitten by a spider when he was a child and almost lost his life, so when building this big house, a large number of camphor trees were used to avoid turbidity, prevent insects and moths, and repel mold and moisture, so that spiders did not dare to enter the house. But this also violates the taboo of Guangfeng folk customs. Because the spider is called "joy" in the Guangfeng dialect, there is a folk proverb that "there is 'joy' is an auspicious omen, and no 'joy' is the image of a loser". Later, his family fortunes really decayed.
Of course, these are folk legends, but it is also these popular anecdotes that make up the mystery of the big house! The mystery of the big house, the gods show the mysteries in it brick by brick, and the gods hide secrets in it stone by stone. "Easy to get into" has become the best annotation of the mysterious house of the "labyrinth". I often walk around the big house, and the curiosity in my heart should also be "strange", and I can't stop a thought. Countless people have not been able to dig deeper and find a strong basis, which on the surface seems to be missing something, but it is precisely this lack that has left two hundred years of suspense, so that people from afar feel the mysterious scenery of the Ten Capitals House that makes people wonder and can't help but leave...
Four
In addition to the mystery of the big house, its beauty is equally fascinating. The beauty of the big house, the beauty of the house is filled with endless humanistic connotations and life charm between the rafters of the house; the beauty of the big house, the beauty of its architecture and poetic residence. Entering the Ten Capitals House, what I can not forget the most is: branches and branches, axes and axes, forming a large house; high halls, deep alleys, and heavy connections; box rooms, bedrooms, large suites and small rooms, inner and outer rooms; carved beam painting buildings, cornice arch buckets, flower arch walls, round door moon holes, elegant and chic, making people feel like entering a simple and elegant art hall.
From the main entrance to the road, all kinds of birds, animals, flowers and wood diagrams, people's eating and living scenes at that time, vividly displayed in the eaves, colonnades, window ledges, plaques, exquisite brick carving, wood carving, stone carving "three carvings" art, breathtaking, giving people a noble and elegant, pleasing beauty. Based on jiangxi wood carving culture, wood carving art integrates the flat carving of Dongyang, Zhejiang And the round carving of Fujian into one, forming the characteristics of creating a momentum according to the shape and paying attention to the expression of the gods. The brick carving art style is slender, the carving is excellent, the spatial level is rich, the artistic conception is far-reaching, and it is full of literary interest. The art of stone carving is clearly layered, the chapter method is compact, and the wall base of the big house, the fish pond, the round door, etc. are all reliefs, circular carvings, skeleton carvings, and through carvings with a strong sense of painting. Looking at the dazzling, solid and heavy "Three Eagles", one pattern after another jumped in front of your eyes, pine crane changchun, magpie plum, carp jumping dragon gate, eight immortals crossing the sea... All are beautifully composed, sharply knifed, clear lines and lifelike. Look at the staggered patio, look at the magnificent hall, whether it is a hidden project or a decorative project, not only pursues durability, simplicity and elegance, but also strives to create a cultural atmosphere of elegant and popular appreciation, and exudes a warm sense of home everywhere. I think how much effort and wisdom must be poured into this builder. This practice of not being luxurious and pursuing economic and practicality has accumulated the artistic style of the construction craftsmen at that time, and is full of rustic beauty.
Coming out of the big house, wandering in the quiet alleys of the village, I seem to have traveled back to ancient times, in front of and behind the house, in the corner of the courtyard by the road, the chickens and dogs barking... I seemed to be in the paradise of Tao Yuanming, forgetting all the troubles of the world, leaving only an indescribable comfort. As the sun sets, the smoke rises from each family's cooking, and the whole ancient village is shrouded in soft smoke, hazy. From time to time, there are a few cows calling around the village and a few barks of dogs chasing livestock, which shows the tranquility and leisure of the ancient village. The fragrance of the earth, the aroma of wild grasses, and the fragrance of the meals wafting from the ancient villages float throughout the space, refreshing the heart. Climb to the highest point of the ancient village, bird's eye view of the Shidu Dawu and Shidu Village panorama, only to see the mountains surrounded, the mountains are majestic, the purple xia is haunting, the rice fragrance is pervasive, the two small rivers of Daxi and Houxi are glowing with silver light, one left and one right around the house, slowly going north, in front of the natural village at the bottom of the rock in the distance, merging into one to form a U-shaped bend, becoming a "belt water" in front of the village, the distant Hengxi Pa Pass and the mountain at the bottom of the rock form a gathering of wealth and fortune, and the whole village is like a fishing boat rowing slowly to the north, typical of the "feng shui treasure land" in the eyes of ancient phasiognosists. This scene reminds me of the myths and legends of "Tong Jia Tong Tianzi, He Jia He Shangshu, Miss Yang Wu Yang", reminds me of the ancient absolute of "out of the Double Mountains, Looking at the Six Stones, Six Stones Leilei", and reminds me of the beautiful story of "Liangcheng Gate Jixian House". It is these profound cultural heritage that have made a village of water spirits and a large house that still stands out in the ups and downs of more than 200 years. And the big house under my eyes is breathing quietly in the green of this village, sometimes a few flocks of swallows flying in the patio, and sometimes a few wisps of cooking smoke slowly rise from the black tiles, like an abstract and real net, gradually enveloping the entire ancient village. This web is filled with a mysterious and distant atmosphere, as if telling the countless unsolved mysteries of the big house...
Wang Shu-Lai Images
Epitaph of Wang Jixian's father Wang Weiping
Wang Jixian's epitaph
Wang Jixian's title deed
Source: Songfeng WeChat