Overview
There are residential courtyards all over urban and rural areas in Hancheng City, and Dangjia Village is a typical traditional residential village in northern China. Domestic and foreign experts praised it as a "residential treasure" and "a living fossil of the villages where humans live in the East". It is now a national security unit.
Most of the people in Dangjia Village have the surnames Dang and Jia. Because people with the Dang surname live 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 the second year of Yuan Zhishun (1331), it is located in a gourd-shaped valley running east-west. There are more than 330 households and more than 1,400 people in the village. During the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty, the two surnames Dang and Jia got married and entered into business as a partnership. The business prospered and they became a wealthy local businessman. As a result, large-scale construction took place in the Ming and Qing dynasties. In the first year of Xianfeng in the Qing Dynasty (1851), a fort was built on the northeast highland of the village to connect the villages into one. There are currently 123 courtyards and 321 courtyards.
Dangjia Village has a long history, appropriate site selection, sophisticated architecture, and rich connotations. It has villages and villages, complete group protection, complete public facilities, and safe refuge and defense. There are public buildings and unique buildings in the village, such as pagodas, ancestral halls, private schools, festival memorial tablets, housekeeping towers, secret passages, sentry gate towers, temples, old ponds, ancient wells, and gunpowder magazines. There are more than 20 lanes running through the village, with clear priorities. All are paved with stones or pebbles, antique and unique.
Each hospital generally covers an area of ??about 260 square meters and is rectangular in shape. Some are square, commonly known as "a seal". The courtyard is surrounded by a hall, left and right wing rooms, and a gatehouse. The hall is the head, the wings are the arms, and the porter is the feet, which resembles a human figure and has a metaphorical meaning. The hall is tall and spacious, with mostly resting eaves on the front eaves. It is used as a place for worshiping ancestors and holding banquets. During weddings and funerals, the movable screen door is removed and banquets are set up, which obviously plays the role of hall facilities. The gatehouse and wing room are the living rooms, where elders and brothers live in an orderly manner.
Walking into Dangjia Village, the tall and imposing "Zoumamen Tower" is listed on both sides of the lane. The architectural decoration is very exquisite, simple and exquisite, and has three sculptures. It is a collection of sculpture art. There are horse-mounting stones, horse-tying posts and horse-tying rings outside the house. The door pillows are square or drum-shaped, both of which are made of stone. There are lion gate piers, Guer gate piers, lion gate piers combined with Guer gate piers, and simple upright double-body line-carved gate piers. Especially the Lion Gate pier, whether it is rough and simple or intricately carved, it can make the shape of this beast vivid and lifelike.
There are beautiful brick carvings on both sides of the gatehouse, which are very rich in content, including music, chess, calligraphy and painting, plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum, deer, rabbit, elephant and horse, tiger, cow, unicorn, as well as geometric patterns, ten thousand-character crutches, Bagua diagrams, etc. Etc., what is even more eye-catching is the inscription on the forehead, which is found in almost every household. It is either wood or brick carving and is written by famous people. It is quite exquisite and has become a display of the art of calligraphy. From the content point of view, there are roughly three categories: flaunting one's ancestors, ethics and morals, and pursuit of ideals.
The wall inside the gate is mostly made of brick carvings, with various themes, including "Deer and Crane Spring Together", "Sealing (Bee) Waiting (Monkey) Hanging Seal", "Five Blessings (Bat) Holding Longevity", etc. Etc., some have a big Chinese character "福" or a big Chinese character "Shou". Most of them are on the gables on both sides of the eaves of the hall. The content is mostly about moral cultivation and the like, with a strong cultural atmosphere, like this. The living space of real life has expanded into people's spiritual world. It not only beautifies the architectural space, but also has the function of educating multiple generations across time and space. These architectural arts embody traditional Chinese architecture and are a fusion of literature, morality, and aesthetics. It embodies a potential rural cultural power and is a civilized achievement created by the working people in architectural decoration.
Guardian House
The housekeeper building in the village is a square brick building. It is a pavilion-style building with a height of 14.5 meters. It is a watchtower for defense facilities. It is exquisitely carved and uniquely constructed. It is a representative work of brick carvings in Dangjia Village. The Feng Shui Pagoda was built in the third year of Yongzheng reign of the Qing Dynasty (1725). It has six floors and a hexagonal shape. The tower is 37.5 meters high. There are tablets enshrined inside each floor of the tower and brick plaques on each floor. From the content Looking at it, you can see how the people of Dangjia Village cleverly used the Feng Shui Tower to express more humanistic connotations and entrust a life ideal of self-cultivation and family management.
Dangjia Village’s economy in the Ming and Qing dynasties. After becoming wealthy, they not only carried out large-scale construction projects, but also pursued cultural improvement. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were 5 Jinshi candidates and 44 scholars in the village. Almost half of the households achieved fame.
With the discovery of the ancient residential complex in Dangjia Village, experts and scholars from China and Japan read out articles on the investigation of Dangjia Village at the UNESCO meeting, which attracted experts and scholars at home and abroad to inspect Dangjia Village. Relevant architectural experts from China and Japan compiled the "Dangjia Village" The monographs "Jiacun—Traditional Rural Settlement in Northern China" and "Hancheng Village and Dangjia Village Residences". It can be said: "Yaogao Fort was built in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and experts from hundreds of countries in Europe, Asia and the United States praised the ancient village."