Deyuantang

In order to worship the immortal ancestors and carry forward the virtues of the ancestors, the people surnamed Zhang under the tower built "Zhang" on the east slope of the village in the late Ming Dynasty and on the original residence of Zhaoji's ancestors. The family temple "Deyuantang". Deyuan Hall faces south from the north, with the green hills as its back and the stream facing the stream. It is exquisitely designed, simple and elegant, and is a "two-entry building". This ancestral hall is one of the most complete ancient surname ancestral hall buildings that can be seen in China. The four characters "Zhang's Family Temple" are written on the ancient archway on the front, and there are two dragons playing with beads cut and inlaid with colored porcelain pieces, which makes the image lifelike. Stepping into the archway and passing through the courtyard, you will find the main hall. A large horizontal plaque hangs in the middle with three large gold-plated characters "Deyuantang" written on it. Under the eaves of the front hall, traditional famous opera characters are embossed on both sides. There is a large stone drum on each side of the gate, and the stone drum screen is carved with traditional figures of the Twenty-Four Filial Piety. The reliefs on the roof ridges are cut from various colored porcelain pieces, including dragons, tigers, lions, unicorns, phoenixes, pheasants and other rare birds and animals; there are peonies, camellias, orchids, chrysanthemums and other flowers and plants. A hundred beasts are contending, a hundred flowers are blooming, the composition is exquisite, and both form and spirit are present. The hall is decorated with dragons and phoenixes, and the wood and stone decorations are magnificent and unique. The beams of the hall are engraved with a cautionary saying by Zhu Xi of the Song Dynasty: "No matter how stupid your descendants are, you must read poems and books; no matter how far away your ancestors are, your sacrifices must not be dishonest." On the red pillars on both sides of the hall, it is written that the work by Zhang Ao, Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, is based on the family surnamed Zhang. A pair of long couplets of famous historical officials: "The surname was inscribed by Xuanyuan Daru, two articles supported the Han Dynasty, three heroes were outstanding in their achievements, four ministers were awarded the title of Five Tigers, Museum, Six Historians, Diao Crown and Seven Leaves. They were still members of the Qinghe Brigade Sect, making their names known as Yisi's rank. Eight Immortals Cauldron Armor Jiucheng Pingxing Ten Ce Renshu Hundred-Character Golden Mirror Qianqiu Qingqian Wanxuan Dao Spirit Yi Zun Still Documented Zongzhi. "The 78 characters in the upper and lower couplets are embedded in the sequence of "one to ten hundred and billions", containing 14 allusions. Among them, "Hundred Characters of Renshu" is the family model of the ninth generation Zhang Gongyi who lived together in the Tang Dynasty. In the middle of the main hall, there is an exquisite large shrine, which is arranged with the shrines of the ancestors starting from the founding ancestor.

In front of Deyuan Hall is a half-moon-shaped pond. Fish are swimming in the pond and the temple is sparsely shadowed, adding to the beautiful artistic conception. On the stone flats on both sides in front of the pond stand 23 stone dragon flagpoles over 10 meters high. The poles are embossed with dragons, soaring into the clouds and mist, ready to take off. Behind Deyuan Hall, there is a lush landscape forest, extending upward with the mountain peaks, straight into the sky, and the wind blows the forest waves, making it majestic.

Coincidentally, in Tainan County, Taiwan, there is also the Deyuan Hall, the ancestral hall of the Zhang family, which was built during the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty. The Deyuan Hall on both sides of Fujian and Taiwan not only has the same name, but also its architectural format, layout, scale and even the horizontal archway. The plaques and couplets on the columns are all exactly the same.

Former Kuomintang general Zhang Fakui inscribed a banner for the "Zhang Family Genealogy" under the tower: "Looking at the Qinghe River, thousands of people have worshiped, and the melons and vines lead to branches." This tells the story of the descendants of the Zhang family in Deyuantang under the tower. Sun's bloodline. The descendants of the Zhang family under the tower began to migrate out of the country at the end of the Ming Dynasty. They first arrived in places such as Machen, Netherlands. The Zhang family members who migrated to Taiwan began when Zheng Chenggong's army entered Taiwan. They settled after regaining Taiwan. After that, people from all generations moved to Taiwan. Today, Taiwan There are more than 10,000 descendants of Deyuantang in Southeast Asian countries, the United States, Canada and other places. Zhang Shigang, who moved to Taiwan in the 13th generation, founded a business in Tainan and passed it on to his descendants. The business was profitable and his family was prosperous. His descendants returned in the first year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1796) and the seventeenth year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1812). Pay homage to relatives and ancestors in the countryside and remember their ancestors' virtues. In the ninth year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1870), Deyuantang was undergoing repairs for the second time. Zhang Shigan's descendants sent people back to their hometown to donate money, and specially measured the architectural specifications of "Deyuantang" and copied the murals, archways, plaques, The inscription on the stone pillar said that after returning to Taiwan, an ancestral hall of the same size and style was built in Tainan and named Deyuantang, so that future generations would always remember their roots in the mainland. Nowadays, the Deyuan Hall of the Zhang Clan Ancestral Hall in Taxia Village has become a bridge and link for the Zhang family members living abroad. Every year, an endless stream of Zhang family members living in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and overseas return to the Deyuantang Hall in Tagia Village to find their roots and pay homage to their ancestors.

Deyuantang currently has 23 stone dragon flagpoles, which is the largest number of existing stone dragon flags in China and is extremely rare.

Tulou

The history of Taxia Village can be traced back to the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty. Stepping down the mountain to this place, in Hakka dialect, "stepping down" and "taxia" are homophonic, hence the name. At that time, there were still barren mountains and thorny mountains under the tower. After several generations of hard work, the Zhang family gradually prospered. The original earthen huts they lived in were no longer suitable for the needs of settlement, so they built earthen buildings on both sides of the valley. The earliest Fuxing Building was built in the fourth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty (i.e. 1631). Later, 42 earth buildings were built one after another, including square, round, apron-shaped, curved-foot-shaped, etc. These earth buildings are spread along the mountains and streams in various shapes. , magnificent. In the late Qing Dynasty, due to geographical restrictions, there was no land to build large-scale earth buildings under the tower. The Zhang people adapted to local conditions and built single-yard earth-wood and brick-wood structures on stilts in the open space on both sides of the stream, forming a small building with a small area. The wonderful landscape of buildings and scattered heights. Among the earth buildings under the tower, the most distinctive one should be Yude Building. The first half of the building is four stories high, with a hall and two stairs, which is no different from ordinary earth buildings. The strange thing is that the second half of the building, which is as high as three stories, only has a half-moon-shaped rammed wall covered with retaining tiles and nothing else. People vividly call it the "apron building". There is another wonder under the tower, the Deyuantang of Zhang's ancestral temple, which has a history of more than 400 years.

On the front of the ancient archway is a "Two Dragons Playing with Pearls" inlaid with colored porcelain tiles. On the roof are reliefs pasted with various colored porcelain tiles, including historical figures such as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the Eight Immortals, and the list of gods, including dragons, tigers, lions, unicorns, phoenixes, pheasants, etc. There are rare birds and animals, including peonies, camellias, orchids, chrysanthemums and other famous flowers and herbs. A hundred beasts are contending, and a hundred flowers are blooming. The composition is exquisite and lifelike. Twenty stone flagpoles stand beside a pond in front of the hall, like a forest of stone. These are to commend the tribesmen who passed the imperial examination. The top of liberal arts is the pen, and the top of the martial arts is the sword. The stone flagpole towers into the sky, solemn and solemn. Such a dense concentration of stone flagpoles is the first among the tulou villages in southwestern Fujian. It can be seen that there are indeed outstanding people under the tower.