Walking into Huizhou, we can see that there are many old houses in every village. Most of these old houses have high walls and deep courtyards with heavy doors and narrow windows. According to my old comrades living in Jixi, most men in ancient Huizhou went out for business and had women and children at home. For safety, men who come back from business are made like this. The whole old house is closed, with only one patio, which is connected with heaven and earth.
Don't look at the patio of the old house, there is a lot of knowledge in the building. The size and width of the patio depend on the size and height of the house. There are squares and rectangles. In a village, the courtyard of the ancestral hall is the largest. When you walk into the old house of Hu's ancestral hall in Longchuan, Jixi, the first thing you see is the sunshine sprinkled on the patio, which makes the old house full of vitality. I stood in the middle of the courtyard, which is known as the first temple in the south of the Yangtze River, and looked up at the stone strip with sky, blue sky and white clouds, dazzling sunshine, and then bent down to lie prone on the ground, washed away by the rain. This made me realize that the patio hanging in the air really gives modern people a different feeling of seeing the world.
The structure of patio is very exquisite, which is a creation of Huizhou people. An old house with many patios. There is a main hall, a kitchen, a large side hall on the left and a small patio on the wall. This courtyard, large and small, combines the philosophy of life and beautiful yearning of the whole Huizhou people.
Although I came to Huizhou three times, I didn't spend the night here. I wonder what the terrace feels like at night. I didn't come to Huizhou to see the old house in rainy season, and I couldn't experience the taste of the old house in rainy day. But I was thinking that there are two or three people living in such a big old house, and they are all women and children. The night must be lonely and desolate. Undoubtedly, in the old house, no matter how good the bright moon night is, it is difficult to stir the youthful hearts of Huizhou women without men. This courtyard can make Huizhou men jump out of the sky. However, this patio is an insurmountable "heavenly prison" for Huizhou women.
The patio is the most important lighting structure in the old house. It is for this reason that, generally speaking, the thick door of an old house is pushed open, with a corridor on three sides and a living room above it. The living room is relatively large and is called "Tang Ming" in Huizhou. Therefore, there is also a saying that "four waters belong to Tang Ming". It means that everything full of spirituality floating down from the sky belongs to my old house. This is probably an expectation of ancient Huizhou people for life.
During the day, bathed in sunshine from the patio; At night, covered with moonlight falling from the patio; In the rainy season, I listened to the thin rain falling from the patio alone.
The patio closed everything for Huizhou women. Facing the empty old house, this is the ancient Huizhou women guarding the "unfathomable" patio and wasting their lives.
Patio is not only a unique name in Huizhou, China, but also a historical witness of men staying in ancient Huizhou for thousands of years.