Writing and Photography

In Bishan village, at the heart of the historic region of Huizhou in Central China, architectural heritage, once an afterthought, is now beginning to attract attention as a potential source of tourism development. The Shisanmen Hall, pictured here in a drawing by Bishan local Wang Shouchang whose forbears built it 280 years ago, is one of the three Wang family ancestral halls that remain in the village. Another 33 were lost to the ravages of war and neglect. 

Wang Shouchang, 67, is a 93rd-generation member of the Wang family that once dominated village life in Bishan. Wang devotes much of his private time to researching the kinship history of the region. In the past, people relied on ancestral halls and genealogies to keep the family records. Today, Wang is one of the few interested in village history.

Despite its poor condition, the exterior wall of Mingxian Hall is a fine example of the distinctive architecture of the Huizhou region. The hall was built during the 18th century. The original stone carvings, murals, stele and the couplets that adorned its gates were stripped from the facade after it was confiscated by the government when the communists came to power in 1949.

Wang Shouchang (right) looks out at the main courtyard of Mingxian Hall with its caretaker, Wang Changfa (center), 72, and his wife. Above the clutter, the elegant timbered roof beams remain intact. Wang Changfa began renting Mingxian hall from the government at 20 RMB per year in 1982. Since then, he and other villagers have gradually transformed the building into a communal storage space and barn for Wang Changfa’s pigs and chickens. “The government has long stopped charging me the rent,” Wang says, “but I still have the responsibility to keep [the hall] standing.”

Fallen beams, window frames and forgotten furniture obstruct the passage between the back room and inner courtyard of Mingxian Hall. “In my lifetime, people have never performed any rituals in ancestral halls in our village,” says Wang Shouchang. He says the last he heard of these customs was from elderly relatives during his childhood, six decades ago. In the nearby towns of Xidi and Hongcun, ancestral halls and other historic buildings are largely intact and UNESCO heritage status has brought a lucrative stream of domestic tourists.

Two wooden trestles, constructed and installed by the hall’s caretaker Wang Changfa, hold up the front corner of the damaged Mingxian Hall. Wang says he hopes “someone will take [the hall] away from me and repair it properly.”

Wang Shouchang shares a historical map that he drew in 2010 of Bishan village with Ou Ning, an artist who moved to the village in 2013. Ou is one of the founders of the Bishan Project, whose aim is to revitalize the village’s culture and economy. Many sites on the map no longer exist.

Renovation is underway at one of Bishan’s other historic ancestral halls, Qitai Hall, seen here. After some convincing by Ou Ning, co-founder of the Bishan Project, the owner of popular Nanjing-based bookstore Librairie Avant-Garde decided to open a Bishan branch in the hall. Ou hopes the adaptive reuse of traditional houses and ancestral halls may help Bishan prosper, even without the development of mass tourism. Renovation is ongoing and the bookstore is expected to open early this year.

Another example of adaptive reuse, Pig’s Inn Number 3 is the most recent of a successful trio of high-end inns in the Huizhou region. The first two in Xidi and Bishan are renovated traditional Huizhou-style homes that have fallen out of favor with the locals, who prefer modern apartment-style living if they can afford it. This third inn is an erstwhile rapeseed oil factory on the outskirts of Bishan. It is not yet open to the public. The inns cater to an international clientele who eschew the region’s more popular modes of tourism.

Renovation is still a distant goal for Mingxian Hall, where brush and lumber obscure a stack of coffins. In Huizhou, locals consider it auspicious to pre-order custom-made coffins in mid-life. Many of them are stored here.

A carved lion perches in the corner of Mingxian Hall’s inner courtyard. During the Qing dynasty, when Mingxian Hall was built, the Huizhou region was known for its superior craftsmanship in stone, wood, brick and ink slab carving. Some elderly villagers still refer to Mingxian as “lion hall.”

Mingxian Hall is accessed through a side entrance in Wang Changfa’s home. He and his wife keep a pair of pigs and a gaggle of chickens in the inner courtyard.

Temporary walls and overgrown greenery partially mask the outer gates and stone pillars of the Mingxian Hall. A villager examines the entryway, which is rarely opened. Four wooden pegs above the gate indicate this hall was built to honor an ancestor who served as a fourth-rank civil official in the Qing court. A pair of stone drums and lions that used to flank the front gate are missing.

The stone carving of a tiger on an elaborate stone plinth peeking out from behind a wooden barricade is another sign the hall was built to honor a high-level official. With a burgeoning tourist industry, stone carving has again become a lucrative business.

Wang Shouchang stands in the shade of a tree on the outskirts of Bishan. Below this patch of raised earth lie the unattended tombs of the Wang family. The family originated from the Lu state (today’s Shandong province) more than 2,600 years ago during the Spring and Autumn Period and first settled in Bishan during the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). According to Wang, “These tombs likely belong to the 70th generation, but nobody knows for sure.”