Chapter 3098: Juekui Xu Ancestral Hall Duanjin Hall – Governing the Family with Discipline, Cherishing Good Neighbourliness
Jumbo Huang’s Photographic Journey: The Complete Collection of Royal Ancient Architecture
Chapter 3098: Juekui Xu Ancestral Hall Duanjin Hall – Governing the Family with Discipline, Cherishing Good Neighbourliness
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Sanhua Village, which has lost much of its ancient charm, urgently needs revitalisation – yet that does not mean its historic buildings must be demolished. Before arriving, I had heard that Sanhua Village is famous for its ‘three abundances’: abundant water, abundant fish ponds and abundant ancestral halls. After taking a turn inside, it proved true: water sources are plentiful, fish ponds are everywhere, and the village also contains famous historic structures such as the Narcissus Ancient Temple and the Zizheng Dafu Ancestral Hall. Among them, the Jizhi Xu Ancestral Hall was also the meeting place of the Panhua County branch of the Tongmenghui during the Xinhai Revolution; of the eighteen martyrs from Huaxian County in the Xinhai Revolution, sixteen came from this village. Walking into this village with such a weighty history, one cannot help but feel deep respect.
Some elderly folk in the village know every nook and cranny, every blade of grass, by heart. In every village in Huadu, a landmark large banyan tree stands at the village entrance – rugged, dense and faithfully rooted for centuries, growing tougher with age, never toppling. Most of the banyans planted in Sanhua Village are fine-leaf banyans, their foliage thick and lush, their roots stout and powerful. Teacher Xu Zhiqiang says most of the old banyans here are over a hundred years old. Everyone treats the big banyan at the village entrance like a relative; many families with newborns will come and pay respects to the old banyan as a ‘godfather’ or ‘godmother’, praying for their child’s wellbeing.
According to the historical records of Sanhua Village Committee in Xinhua Town, Huadu District, Guangzhou, there are many large ponds in the village. [Royal Ancient Architecture Collection] No. 31384: Fengshan Xu Ancestral Hall sits beside one of the ponds. The ancient village once had a comb-shaped layout, but this has been damaged by newly built matchbox-style self-built farmhouses. However, individual ancestral halls still have their fine features. Fengshan Xu Ancestral Hall is already very dilapidated, but the retained stonework – ‘shrimp bow’ beams, stone lions, irregular bracket sets, sparrow braces and pedestal heads – are all masterpieces of stone carving. The sparrow braces and wood-carved fascia boards are also distinctive. The grey sculpture next to the wok-ear gable wall has faded.
[Royal Ancient Architecture Collection] No. 31385: Songdong Xu Ancestral Hall stands to the left of Fengshan Xu Ancestral Hall, now reduced to crumbling walls. Continuing along the village road, one sees three large fish ponds. Around the Sanhua Industrial Zone there are at least five or six ponds. Gazing across them, you can see a cluster of vernacular two-veranda dwellings arranged in comb formation. In the ancient village, it is essentially the ancestral halls that remain best preserved; most other dwellings have been torn down and replaced with matchbox-style modern farmhouses.
Ancient banyan trees are scattered throughout the village. The ponds are fenced off with guardrails. A roadside sign indicates that Sanhua Ancient Street is on the right. I walked to Ronghua Lane, where the grey plasterwork is very distinctive; the bird-and-flower motifs still retain their original colours. On the ridges of some ancestral halls the moulded decorations feature landscape or floral patterns. The side walls are inset with green-glazed lattice windows, and the plasterwork under the eaves is relatively fine. The pedestal heads have mostly been repaired; in some older buildings the pedestal heads on both sides have been knocked off – thieves love to steal this component. Comparatively, ‘shrimp bow’ beams and stone lions are harder to steal.
[Royal Ancient Architecture Collection] No. 31386: Mo’an Xu Ancestral Hall has characteristic chiwen roof finials and ridge ornaments. Looking at the now dilapidated ancestral hall, and thinking of the famous figures who came from here and the past glory, my heart sighed deeply. Perhaps life is a series of cycles and watchful waiting. We need to pause and with our hearts savour the brilliant family memories that every brick and tile brings us, only then can we feel how vividly these people once lived in the long river of history.
Mo’an Xu Ancestral Hall was built in the early Qing Dynasty and underwent a renovation in the second year of the Tongzhi reign (1863). Inside the hall there is a three-gate, five-storey brick-and-stone memorial archway, with exquisitely carved brickwork of ‘a hundred flowers bringing prosperity’ – a rarity among the ancestral halls of ancient villages. These two ancestral halls were listed as cultural relics protection sites of Guangzhou in December 2008.
According to Tan Xiaoyu from Huadu, Sanhua Village has many fish ponds and abundant produce; the villagers all lived quite comfortably, yet many local girls were unwilling to marry into the village because every family had a pond. The annual pond-draining, fish-catching and carrying of pond mud for fertilising the fields were particularly arduous tasks. Villagers recall that when they drained the ponds to net the fish, it always happened to be the coldest winter days. The freezing pond water left hands and feet red and swollen, as painful as knife cuts. After the pond was drained, every household, men and women, young and old, would turn out to carry the bottom mud to the fields as fertiliser. It was sheer hard labour. Consequently, many girls dreaded carrying pond mud and would avoid marrying into Sanhua Village unless they had to. In those days, a young man from Sanhua had to spend far more money than elsewhere to find a wife.
Later, Elder Xu brought the group behind the Zizheng Dafu Ancestral Hall, pointed to the large fish pond there, and said that he had grown up swimming in that very pond. At the age of four his mother threw him into the pond and forced him to learn to swim. The reason was that once, a new straw hat of the family’s was blown by the wind into the middle of the pond. His father couldn’t swim at all and could do nothing as the new hat sank, which infuriated his mother. So as soon as her son turned four, she tossed him into the pond and made him learn. But learning to swim brought a lot of joy to his childhood – in the summers he often splashed around in the pond with his friends, very happy indeed, and his mother never again had to worry about the family’s straw hats being blown into the water and lost.
Entering Sanhua Village, unlike many other local villages which typically have only one pond in front of the ancestral hall, here you turn a corner and see another large fish pond. Villagers say that in earlier times a river used to run through the village; water resources were especially abundant. The entire settlement was built along the river. Later, for ease of access and economic gain, the villagers built roads and dug ponds to raise fish, thus fragmenting the river into one large pond after another. Each pond is at least ten metres deep, which gives some idea of how wide and deep the original river must have been. In front of the main entrance of the Xu Clan’s Great Ancestral Hall there is a well. The villagers told us that this is not a potable well, but a feng shui well.
From the older generation we heard that once, right in front of the ancestral hall in the river, there was an unclaimed grave mound belonging to an outsider. No matter how high the river rose, the mound would always poke above the surface, which seemed very eerie. At the time, unlucky things kept happening in the village, so the villagers quickly invited a feng shui master to remedy the situation. The master had them dig a well directly in front of the hall, aimed at the grave mound, and seal it with talismans. After that the grave mound never again ‘surfaced’, and the village has enjoyed peace and good fortune ever since. Whether this story is true or not, the feng shui well remains there to this day, well sealed and preserved, giving the villagers a reassuring anchor when facing things beyond their understanding.
The granite footings and stone plinths of Mo’an Xu Ancestral Hall are extremely well preserved. Murals depict various heroes; the irregular bracket sets and sparrow braces have been renovated and repainted. There are many murals themed on filial piety. Next to Mo’an Xu Ancestral Hall, at No. 13 Zhonghua Street, Huadu District, stands the Xu Clan’s Great Ancestral Hall.
The Xu surname mainly originates from the Ying clan; the descendants of Ruomu, son of Boyi, the great-grandson of Emperor Zhuanxu. Because Boyi assisted the Great Yu in taming the floods, Emperor Shun not only gave him the surname Ying but also married him to a woman of his own clan, Yao. Lady Yao later bore two sons; the younger, Ruomu, was enfeoffed in Xu (present-day Si County, Anhui) as a reward for his father’s merit, establishing the State of Xu. The State of Xu survived through the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties as a vassal state. In the Spring and Autumn period, Xu was defeated by Chu, and its power gradually waned. In the eighth year of King Jing of Zhou, Xu was conquered by Wu; the descendants of the state thereafter took Xu as their clan name, passing it down through the generations.
In the second year of the Zhihe reign of Emperor Renzong of Song (1055), Xu Yanbo, whose ancestral home was Haozhou, Jiangxi, moved to Zhuji Lane in Nanxiong. His grandsons Xu Xin and Xu Jian later moved south to Guangzhou to set up a lecture forum. Xu Xin’s three sons spread out across Lingnan: the eldest, Zongshan, founded the An (Shore) branch, distributed across Nanhai, Shunde, Dongguan, Zhaoqing, Yangjiang, Xinhui, Heshan and Kaiping; the second son, Zongli, founded the Maozhou branch, in Nanhai, Qingyuan and Sanshui; the third son, Zongyuan, founded the Sanhua branch.
Zongyuan’s lineage had a single son for eight generations. In the ninth generation, the five brothers Xizhi, Hengzhi, Houzhi, Xingzhi and Xingzhi established the five major sub-branches of the Xu clan, thereby laying the foundations of Sanhua Xu, including the areas of Dahua, Daling, Wuhua, Chayuan and Datang, and later branching into Guangzhou, Nanhai, Shunde and beyond.
The third son Zongyuan’s Sanhua branch forms a vast Lingnan Xu village, embodying a history interwoven with glory, tragedy, pride and compassion. Sanhua Village today consists of four economic cooperatives – Donghua, Xihua, Zhonghua and Yuanhua – with eighteen villagers’ groups. The Beijing–Guangzhou Railway and the Wuhan–Guangzhou High-Speed Railway run through the village, making transport convenient, and it is now one of the larger urban villages in Xinhua Street, Huadu, Guangzhou.
As the population grew, some villagers moved to other places near Sanhua. The villages of Gongyi, Dahua and Wuhua today are still populated by people surnamed Xu, originally part of Sanhua before becoming independent settlements. What Sanhua Village presents is a vivid image of a typical Pearl River Delta ancient village. It is carved into four relatively independent sections by a series of jade-green ponds. The clan ancestral halls of each branch were built beside the water, with residences lined up behind them – a regular layout yet full of variation. As the central hub of the clan, Zhonghua Village, where the Xu Clan’s Great Ancestral Hall stands, occupies the core position among the four, with the other three villages enclosing it.
During the Republican period, the main water systems of Xinhua were the Tianma River and the Xinjie River. Both were wide and deep, providing irrigation for the farmlands on both banks and having high transport value. Situated on the eastern bank, Sanhua Village was closely tied to the Tianma River, which gave rise to the village’s prosperous dragon boat racing tradition.
According to ancient custom, dragon boats were stored at the bottom of various village ponds, immersed in water and wrapped in pond mud to keep out air and ensure longevity. The four natural villages of Sanhua – Zhonghua, Donghua, Xihua and Yuanhua – each had their own dragon-boat storage pond. The Zhonghua Black Oar was kept in the ‘Doghbi Tong’ (Dog-leg Pond, named for its shape) southwest of the Xu Clan’s Great Ancestral Hall. The Donghua Green Oar was placed in the ‘Dragon Boat Pond’ to the east of Donghua (now filled in for residential use). The Xihua White Oar was sunk in the pond south of Yushan Xu Ancestral Hall in Xihua.
Every year before the Dragon Boat Festival, Sanhua villagers would prepare for the races by lifting the dragon boats from the bottom of the ponds. The lead time depended on the condition of the boats: if major repairs were needed, they would be raised a month in advance; if only minor maintenance was required, half a month ahead was sufficient. Raising the boats was a big event in the village. The day they were brought out was known as ‘Boat-raising Day’. After the dragon boats emerged, the whole village, young and old, would often gather for a big feast, joyfully sharing a ‘dragon boat meal’.
After being brought out, the boat would first be washed clean of mud and weeds in the storage pond, then hauled ashore to dry in the sun. Meanwhile, the hull would be rubbed with lard – this served to make the boat shine, preventing oxidation and preserving the wood, and also made the hull smoother, reducing water resistance when rowing. After a few days of maintenance, the dragon boat gleamed like new and was ready to go into the water for training.
Near what is now the Sanhua Village community service centre, during the Republican period, there was a stretch of mudflats, full of silt and marsh, navigable by dragon boat. After being washed, the boats would be pushed along these mudflats to near the Niangma Bridge, south of the present Zizheng Dafu Ancestral Hall. Once the water level was sufficient, they would sail out into the ‘Shahai’ (the local name for the Tianma River’s Sanhua Village section).
After entering the river, training began. At that time a dragon boat team generally included a flag-bearer, a helmsman, a drummer and the rowers (‘pa-zai’), plus two selected to perform rites, a gong-beater and a ‘boat-jumper’. The ‘boat-jumper’ was usually a strong young man from the village, selected for his weight, springiness and passion; he would stand at the bow and bounce up and down as the boat moved forward, using his weight to amplify the rise and fall of the bow, making the boat break the waves more forcefully. Uncle Qu’s father, Xu Honghan, once served as the helmsman for Zhonghua’s dragon boat team. By the end of the fourth lunar month, once the team had finished training, they would prepare to leave the village and join the annual dragon boat races in other villages.
On the first day of the fifth month, Sanhua’s dragon boats would set out on tour, typically going to Great Pond Edge (present-day Xinhua Village, Xinhua Street) to compete with boats from Daling, Xinjie and Great Pond Edge. On the second or third day they would go to Shenshan, and on the third or fourth to Gaotang in Jiangcun. Sometimes, invited by brother villages, they would row all the way to the provincial capital of Guangzhou, as far as Huadiwan in Liwan. Since the journey was long, the team would prepare meals in advance and carry them in bamboo baskets on the boat as provisions. At that time, there was also a local naming convention for dragon boats on the ‘east and west seas’. Boats from Yayao, Daling, Sanhua, Bi Village and Qishan in western Huaxian were called ‘West Sea Boats’, while those from Jiangcun, Banghu, Yahu and Gaozeng along the Liuxi River were called ‘East Sea Boats’. Every year around the Dragon Boat Festival, East and West Sea Boats would gather in the waters of Gaotang in Jiangcun, Baiyun District, for competitions – a very lively scene.
After touring various places, the annual Dragon Boat Festival races would conclude, and the four dragon boats would return to Sanhua Village, to be once more sunk into their respective ponds, waiting for the next year’s chance to ride the wind and waves once more.
In front of the ‘Dog-leg Pond’ I saw the stone door lintel of the Kang Gong Temple; behind it there must be a little-known story. According to several elderly men including Shi Zheng, a specialty student who loves to grumble, and Xu Qiqu, in earlier times Xinhua had eight dragon boats, of which Sanhua Township owned four: the Donghua Green Oar, the Zhonghua Black Oar, the Xihua White Oar and the Yuanhua Red Oar. These four dragon boats were well known and are still a source of pride among the village elders. Whenever dragon boats come up, people can readily recite the names: ‘Zhonghua big-belly black oar’, ‘Donghua Dongchangmen sand green oar’ and so on.
[Royal Ancient Architecture Collection] No. 31387: Sanhua Village’s Kang Gong Temple bears witness to the four oars of Sanhua.
Of the four dragon boats, the Donghua Green Oar is the best preserved and is still housed in the Zizheng Dafu Ancestral Hall. The other three have either rotted away or disappeared. Legend has it that when making the Zhonghua Black Oar, labour was short and time was tight. With the race approaching, the villagers urged the craftsman day after day. Out of frustration, the craftsman split the work between two brothers in his family, the younger brother making the stern and the elder making the bow. Unexpectedly, their skills were not equal; the younger brother’s stern was finer and more durable, while the elder’s bow was slightly inferior. Moreover, because they were made by two different hands, the upward curves of the bow and stern were not symmetrical, affecting the boat’s strength and speed. The Donghua Green Oar was different: the hull was fashioned from superior ‘kuntin’ hardwood, crafted from start to finish by a single artisan, resulting in a unified quality – solid, reliable, elegant and durable.
After 1949, dragon boat activities in Sanhua Village gradually declined. The competitive aspect of the races lessened; when invited by brother villages to compete, it was mostly in name only – an excuse for brothers to visit each other and renew bonds. In recent years, with urban development, the Tianma River’s riverbed has become shallower and the channel narrower, no longer suitable for dragon boat racing. Sanhua Village has not held dragon boat races for decades. Yet in the villagers’ recounting, the scenes of the old races – bustling riverbanks and roaring crowds – seem vividly present.
[Royal Ancient Architecture Collection] No. 31388: The brick carvings on the pedestal heads of the Xu Clan’s Great Ancestral Hall feature various figures and are extremely exquisite. Guihua Lane is nearby. The Xu Clan’s Great Ancestral Hall is the united clan hall of the Xu lineage in Sanhua Village, dedicated to the founding ancestor of the village, Xu Zongyuan. The hall was first built in the early Qing Dynasty, and underwent two renovations in the 58th year of the Qianlong reign (1793) and the 4th year of the Guangxu reign (1878). Many of the building’s structural components still quite completely reflect the styles of different periods. The stone qilin on the ‘shrimp bow’ beams, the carp-shaped sparrow braces, and the projecting lintel ends are all made from a stone called ‘yashi stone’ (duck-excrement stone) in the Guangzhou area, a building material widely used in the early Qing. The wooden beams of the front porch use crescent-beam construction, with beautiful carvings underneath, typical of the Qianlong period. Meanwhile, the porch columns of the main entrance are exquisitely crafted, with complex lines characteristic of the Guangxu period.
The second hall of the ancestral hall features a three-gate, five-storey brick-and-stone memorial archway, inscribed with ‘Pai Yan Dong Ming’ and ‘Shi De Zuo Qiu’ by Song Gao, the county magistrate of Huaxian in the fifth year of the Qianlong reign.
As introduced by a Huadu local in the piece ‘Duan Fang Ke Fa, Jin Shen Kan Shi – Sanhua Village’s Xu Ancestor Xu Juekui’, during the mid-Qing period, some members of the Huaxian Xu clan opened the Wugui Tang Bookstore in Guangzhou. The books they printed were even exported as far as Southeast Asia and North America, creating a great buzz in their day. According to research by Mr. Hu Liping, the founder of Wugui Tang Bookstore may have been Xu Dekui, the 23rd-generation ancestor of Sanhua Village. This Xu lineage flourished thanks to the bookstore’s success. The Zizheng Dafu Ancestral Hall was built by the 25th-generation ancestor Xu Fangzheng to commemorate his grandfather Xu Dekui. But what many people do not know is that Xu Dekui’s elder brother, Xu Juekui, single-handedly raised his four younger brothers. It can be said that without Xu Juekui, there would have been no subsequent prosperity for this branch of the Sanhua Xus.
The Sanhua Village ‘Xu Clan Genealogy’ records: Xu Juekui, 22nd-generation ancestor of the Sanhua Xus, was born between 1 and 3 a.m. on the 14th day of the fourth month in the 15th year of the Qianlong reign (1750) and died between 9 and 11 a.m. on the 24th day of the eighth month in the 3rd year of the Daoguang reign (1823), living to the age of 74. After his death, the imperial court also bestowed posthumous official titles upon him: ‘Honorary Ninth-Rank Official, additionally awarded the title of Wulüe Qidu (Lieutenant of Valiant Cavalry) in the Enke examination of the 20th Daoguang year; selected as a candidate for Weiqian Zong (Assistant Commander); in the 6th year of the Tongzhi reign, titled Fengzhi Dafu (Grand Master for Palace Attendance), candidate for Inner Cabinet Secretary, plus four honorary grades.’
The family tree records that Xu Juekui, whose formal name was Linchang, courtesy name Juekui, pseudonym Weiyuan, was born in 1750. He had a hard life. His father, Xu Shijiu, was 23 when he had him, and over the following few years sired three more sons: Xu Dekui, Xu Zhikui and Xu Diankui. In 1762, when Xu Juekui was twelve, Xu Shijiu died. Soon after, his fifth younger brother Xu Jiekui was born. The young Xu Juekui was forced to shoulder the burden of the family, going out to earn a living to support his mother and four younger brothers.
The genealogy does not record the details of Xu Juekui’s rise to fortune; only the brief phrase ‘studious and filial, building a family through diligence and thrift’ summarises his legendary struggle. But the bitterness within is something no one else could fully understand. As the saying goes, only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. In a self-authored poem, Xu Juekui wrote: ‘Who understands a lifetime of fear and worry? My path in the world was no different from an orphan’s plight. Planning and striving brought only resentment and slander; calloused hands and toil were laughed at as foolish obsession.’ It is clear he felt deeply about his lot in life.
‘He governed his family with discipline and placed great importance on harmonious relations with neighbours. Whenever a complaint arose, he would help resolve it. As for building pavilions or repairing temples, he was always happy to take the lead.’ He became a well-known model family head far and wide. After establishing himself, Xu Juekui began contributing to his hometown. At that time, Huaxian County had a ‘charity granary’ system, originally a good measure for storing grain against famine. Over time, mismanagement caused the granaries to fall into disrepair, yet the government still required wealthy households to act as ‘granary heads’ and shoulder the burden of administration, which was a lot of trouble. Seeing that the ‘granary head’ system did more harm than good, Xu Juekui grew worried and petitioned the authorities to abolish it – to the applause of the common people.
Xu Juekui was also enthusiastic about clan affairs. In the eighth year of the Jiaqing reign (1803), he took part in building the Zejiang Ancestral Hall at Longjin Eryue (near today’s Longjin Middle Road) in Guangzhou, to commemorate the Xu founding ancestor Xu Zejiang. The ability to build an ancestral hall in the provincial capital is testimony to the influence Xu Juekui wielded among the Xu clan members across the province. The genealogy describes the situation: ‘Gentlemen of all branches recommended him as general manager. All work and materials were properly handled, and everyone was satisfied.’ In the eleventh year of the Jiaqing reign (1806), Xu Juekui built the ‘Zhijun Gongci’ in the village, fulfilling a wish left by his grandfather. In his poem ‘The Completion of the Ancestral Hall – A Statement of Ambition’, he wrote: ‘My grandfather left a last wish to build an ancestral hall; I was twelve when I had leisure time. Before the mourning staff could rot, my father passed away; my stubborn nature held onto this ambition through thick and thin. Over time I gathered much land; the lengthy preparations gave rise to many doubts. Now, near sixty, I have finally completed it; who could ever fathom all the grievances I’ve endured?’ This suggests that at the age of twelve, when his father died, Xu Juekui had already memorised his grandfather’s dying wish. He kept it in mind for decades. Through painstaking effort, he was finally able, close to sixty, to build an ancestral hall for his grandfather Xu Zhijun. In addition, Xu Juekui also compiled a generation poem for his descendants. According to the genealogy, the naming line of this Xu branch runs: ‘Kui Shi Zheng Gui Shang Zhi Wei Gao Tian Bao Er Ding Fu Lü Sui Zhi’, and the courtesy-name line runs: ‘Yuan Wu Zhong Xin Xing Zhong Dun Lun Ke Sheng Zu Wu Wu Shi Qi Chang’.
Chapter 3099: Sacrificing Family to Aid the Nation, Burying Loyal Bones in the Soil – The Former Site of the Tongmenghui Panhua Branch
