Travel Notes on Shanxi (1) Wang Family Courtyard

More than a month after I returned to Changchang from my daughter's home in early April, it happened to be the rainy season in Jiangnan. After being stuck at home for a long time, I felt the urge to go out for a walk. Where to go? When I opened the map of China, I found that Shanxi Province has not been touched yet. As a person who studies history and teaches history, I feel so ashamed! Why? There is an old saying, " Five Thousand Years of China, Look at Shanxi." From
ancient human cultural sites to the ancient imperial city and Baosha Temple; from grotto monuments, sculptures and murals to ancient pagodas, ancient tombs, and Buddhist and Taoist holy sites; From the dangerous forts and heroic passes to the revolutionary cultural relics and historical sites, from north to south, the entire province forms a rich and colorful cultural landscape in Shanxi that combines ancient and modern times. You haven't even gone to watch it. If you don't feel ashamed, who should? Therefore, it is necessary to take a check-in tour as soon as you want.

Before leaving, I quickly reviewed my homework: Shanxi was the birthplace of the Jin state in the pre-Qin period, so it was called "Jin" for short, and it was also called the land of the three Jins. This was because the three families of Han, Zhao, and Wei attacked the local tycoons and divided the land to give the Zhi family to the family. They were divided. In history, this was called "the three families were divided into Jin". However, something unexpected happened, and the family was not separated for long before it was annexed by the old Qin family next door. This is a typical example of people who do not want to die. A piece of Chinese history is nothing more than the history that the world will be divided if it is united for a long time, and it will unite if it is divided for a long time.
Shanxi's historical status has been on par with Qin, Henan, Hebei and Lu since ancient times. In case of division, the situation of mountains, rivers and plateaus inside and outside dominates one side (Jin State and Three Jins, Pingcheng and Jinyang in the Northern Dynasties, Dragon City in the Five Dynasties); in case of unification, it is the military center outside the Great Wall, Guanluo and Jizhou that attack and defend each other. Its function is the most prominent, while its political, economic and cultural functions mainly revolve around its military function. However, once the political and cultural center of China began to shift to the northeast and southeast during the Tang and Song Dynasties, and the center of gravity outside the Great Wall shifted to the northeast, the status of Jin Province would naturally decline, thus forming a downward trend in Shanxi's historical status in the future.

It’s a bit far, let’s go back to the check-in tour. There is only one direct train from Nanchang to Taiyuan, which takes 25 hours. It is almost 8 o’clock in the evening when we arrive in Taiyuan. After settling down, I had a good sleep and started the rush tour mode the next day.

Check in at the first stop, Wang Family Courtyard

There is a saying in China’s residential architecture that “look at Shanxi in the north and Anhui in the south”. The folk houses in southern Anhui have fresh white walls and black tiles, and the Shanxi merchants' courtyards have deep and rich walls. Shanxi merchants have been at the forefront of Chinese merchant gangs for more than 500 years, and compound communities are an external manifestation of their huge wealth accumulation. Shanxi Merchants' courtyards have a rigorous structure and are generally closed structures, separated by tall walls. They are spread out left and right along the central axis, with quadrangles as structural units, and the courtyards are connected to each other to form a huge building complex. The Shanxi Merchants Courtyard not only brings the residential architectural culture to the extreme, embodying the essence of Shanxi folk houses and even northern folk houses, but it is also a witness to the 500-year history of the rise and fall of Shanxi merchants.

Wang Jiagang started his family in Shanxi Province because he was a wealthy businessman. After he became successful, he, like other Shanxi merchant families, built a large amount of construction projects and built a home. From the Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing years of the Qing Dynasty, it successively owned a huge family business including five lanes, five forts and five ancestral halls, and a commercial street. Among them, there are five ancient castles: Hongmen Fort, Gaojiaya Fort, Xibaozi, Southeast Fort and Xianan Fort. They are named after five spiritual animals: "dragon, phoenix, tiger, turtle and lin", with a total area of ​​250,000 square meters. More than 1,000 meters, it is no less than the total building area of ​​the Forbidden City.

The three major building complexes of the Wang Family Courtyard, Red Gate Fort, Gaojiaya Fort, and Wang Family Ancestral Hall, currently open, have a total of 123 large and small courtyards, 1,118 rooms, and an area of ​​45,000 square meters. They are known as the "Chinese Folk Forbidden City" and "Shanxi's Forbidden City." And it is known as "the first Chinese residential house".

Hongmen Fort is mainly where the royal family lived for generations, while Gaojiaya was built by brothers Wang Rucong and Wang Ru of the Wang family during the heyday of the Wang family. The "Dragon" in the center of Hongmen Fort, and the "Feng" in the east of Gaojia Yabao. The Wang family integrated officials, businessmen, civilians, and Confucianism into one body in the entire building system, which followed the traditional Chinese theory of Yin and Yang and the Five Elements. , and conforms to the ethics, morality and etiquette of orderly distinction between superiority and inferiority, internal and external differences, and at the same time, it also draws on the design style of southern garden architecture in parts and details of the building, organically integrating courtyard building techniques and gardening art. It forms a major feature of the architectural art of the Wang Family Courtyard.

The architecture of the Wang Family Courtyard has the characteristics of "valuing elegance over elegance, and valuing novelty and elegance". Its architectural decoration is the culmination of the "delicate and dense" style of the Qing Dynasty. The decoration of the structural accessories are gorgeous, exquisite, graceful and elegant.

The entire building complex of the Wang Family Courtyard consists of courtyards within the courtyard, and each courtyard is divided into three entrances. The first entrance is for the servants, the second entrance is the master's living room and reception room, and the third entrance is the bedroom. Other kitchen courtyards, flower courtyards, Changgong courtyards, Jiading courtyards, and academies are large and small, scattered in an orderly manner, and twist and turn, making strangers feel dizzy and have entered a maze by mistake.

The most talked-about thing about the Wang Family Courtyard is the "Three Sculptures". Brick carvings, wood carvings, and stone carvings can be called the "Three Uniques" of the Wang Family. "Samples from the sky are made on earth, and the carving skills are exquisite and unparalleled in the world." The carvings are rich in content, exquisite in knife work, and vivid and lifelike.

The beauty has faded away, things have changed and people have changed. After seeing the Wang Family Courtyard, one has a special feeling in one's heart. A courtyard that you can't get enough of, a courtyard that "the Wang family doesn't look at the courtyard when they return". There must be countless stories about the deep house compound, but what is more important is the spirit reflected behind the stories.
The honor and favor of hundreds of years will eventually be unable to withstand the changes of the times and gradually become lonely. Although it is no longer prosperous in the past, the essence of northern folk residences is still deeply rooted in every corner of the compound. Time has not erased the traces of the former prosperity here.