? The memorial archway evolved from Lingxingmen and began to be used for offering sacrifices to heaven and holes. Pailou originated in Han Que, matured in Tang and Song Dynasties, reached its peak in Ming and Qing Dynasties, and evolved from practical to commemorative buildings, which were widely used to show off merit and glory. It is not only placed in suburban altars and Confucius temples, but also used in front of palaces, tombs, ancestral temples, yamen and gardens, as well as the starting point of main streets, intersections and bridges. , with a strong landscape, with the effect of asking questions, taking pictures and borrowing scenery.
There are only two types of archways in form, one is called "soaring" and the other is called "listing". The pillars of this archway are higher than the top of Ming-style buildings, as shown in figure 12. Another "not in the first place" style, the highest peak of this archway is the positive ridge of the Ming building, as shown in Figure 35.
? Archway can be divided into six categories from the structure:
? The first category is the wooden archway, with the largest number. ?
? The second category is Shipailou. Most of these archways are gardens, streets and graves. The following pictures are all stone archways.
? There are also colored archways, bronze archways, cement archways and glazed archways, and the number is small.
? According to the architectural intention, archways can be divided into four categories:
One is the merit archway, which records someone's merits, as shown in Figure 2, Guo Xushitou Square. Guo Xu is a veteran of three dynasties. In the twelfth year of Wanli, he made great contributions to the "Pingyi" in Yunnan, and he was a college student of Taibao and Wuyingdian in Jin Dynasty.
? Second, chastity moral archway, which is a heroic woman to commemorate chastity women. There are many such archways in Shexian County, Anhui Province. As shown in Figure 5, it is located in the south of Shexian County, built in 1905, with simple style and rough workmanship. This is the last chastity archway in ancient Huizhou. Although shabby, it is faintly visible that there are 65078 filial daughters' names in six counties of ancient Huizhou. This is a shocking number! How many poor women died tragically in the shackles of feudal thought!
The three categories are symbols of the achievements of the imperial examination, mostly family archways, aiming at glorifying ancestors.
? The fourth category is the sign square, which is mostly located at the entrance of villages and towns and on the streets as the separation of spatial paragraphs.
Archways can be divided into loyalty, filial piety, chastity and righteousness. As shown in Figure 4, there are seven ancient archways in Tang Yue (Figure 4), which are arranged in this order, no matter before or after.
? Under the feudal etiquette system, the concept of hierarchy was clear. Even the memorial archway used for commendation has a clear grade division, and there are mainly four grades.
? The first level: imperial system
Imperialism is the highest level of archway. The emperor issued a decree and the state treasury funded the construction. The number is very limited, as few as stars. Of the seven ancient archways in Tang Yue, only "Li Fang" has reached this level.
? The second floor: Rong En
? Rong En means to honor the country with imperial elegance. It was the emperor who took the initiative to commend meritorious ministers, but he needed to raise funds by himself, and the number was very limited. The largest existing Guo Xushi Square in Huizhou (Figure 2) is a "Rong En" archway.
? The third level: imperial edict
? This is the outstanding deeds of some local squires reported by local officials to the Central Committee. After the central government adopted it, it ordered the construction of memorial archways, and the village raised funds by itself.
? The fourth level, build.
? This is the lowest grade of the archway, and it is also declared by local officials to the central government. The emperor verbally promised to allow the construction and raise funds by himself.
? It is said that there are more than 1000 ancient archways in six counties of ancient Huizhou. After thousands of years of wind and rain, they were destroyed by the war. Traditional archways in Huizhou 136: 3 in Tunxi District (2 rented), 20 in Huizhou District, 76 in Shexian County (2 rented) and 65,438 in Xiuning. Shexian County is known as "the hometown of memorial archways in China".
? Each stone archway is a stone carving handicraft. Traditional stone carving techniques in China, such as round carving, general carving, high relief, shallow relief, flat relief and negative line carving, are widely used in the carving of stone archways.
? The archway not only has a unique architectural structure, but also integrates sculpture, painting, inscriptions, calligraphy and other arts, integrating ancient social life concepts, feudal ethics, feudal traditional ethics and ancient folk customs in one furnace. It has magnificent artistic charm, extremely high aesthetic value and rich and profound historical and cultural connotations.