There is an ancient Shizhai village in eastern Guangdong. Its walls are 4 meters wide and it is a "city within a city". It is impregnable and lives up to its reputation.
There are two Shizhai villages in Guangdong Province included in the sixth batch of Chinese historical and cultural villages, namely Shizhai Village in Nandong Town, Jiaoling County, Meizhou and Shizhai Village in Da'an Town, Lufeng City, Shanwei , because there was an event to be filmed in Lufeng recently, and it happened to be arranged to visit and film this Lufeng Shizhai Village, which I had never heard of before, so I was very lucky to go with the large group to visit.
I have a habit of searching the Internet first before going to a place I have never been to. I saw an aerial bird's-eye view on the Internet that attracted me. The aerial photo is very spectacular!
Unexpectedly, the Shizhai in Lufeng has a long history. The Shizhai is located in Da'an Town, Lufeng City, Shanwei. It was first built in the Tang Dynasty and has a history of more than 1,000 years. Large-scale construction was carried out in the late Ming Dynasty. It has not suffered any damage for hundreds of years. Large-scale natural disasters and man-made destruction, it is currently the only Chinese historical and cultural village in Shanwei City.
In the autumn of Guangdong, the air is crisp and the temperature is as high as 35 or 6 degrees. When we arrived in Shizhai, it was just around 1:30 in the afternoon, and the sun hung high in the sky and it was indescribably roasting. The buildings photographed during this time period happened to be overhead light, so the effect was not very good. Another regret is that my drone had some problems, so I took it back to DJI for maintenance, and I lost a very good aerial photography opportunity!
With a history of more than 1,000 years, Shizhai Village is where the Huang surname lives. People from Shizhai came to Shizhai to establish the foundation in the Chongzhen period of the late Ming Dynasty (1641). From the location selection of Shizhai Village, it can be seen that the ancestors of Shizhai were very particular about "Feng Shui". It faces east to west and is built against the mountain. It has distinct characteristics of ancient agricultural civilization and Lingnan geographical culture. From the overall layout of the building to the security and defense settings, Shizhai Village is a miracle.
According to villagers, the stone wall has a circumference of about 700 meters and a height of 10 meters. The foundation is made of southern stone slabs and is 3 meters high. The building material used is that the upper part is tamped with Sanhe soil. The wall is 4 meters wide. The wall is divided into inner and outer walls when it is more than 3 meters long. There is a 2-meter wide path between the inner and outer walls. In order to prevent foreign invasion, the city wall, which is more than ten feet high, is ancient and mottled with gray and black holes used for defense and external shooting.
Shizhai is divided into four gates: east, west, north and south. Forty meters away from the city gate, there are wall towers on both sides. The self-growing grass poetically hangs upside down on the city wall, which not only adds green vitality to the mottled and vicissitudes of the wall, but also plays a protective role. This is the secret of the city wall's longevity over hundreds of years.
Entering the Shizhai City Gate, the first thing you see is an ancestral hall building, the Huang Family Temple. At first, many surnames including Shi, Chen, Xie, and Huang lived in Shizhai. It was probably at the end of the Ming Dynasty that the Huang clan moved in. After that, all the surnames moved out one after another, leaving only the Huang clan, who spoke the Minnan dialect.
The main building of the ancestral hall is centered on a three-entry hall on the central axis. There are two "Nine Schools" on each side of the main body arranged vertically, separated from the main seat by a "fire lane" , and a "Fire Alley" and "Rowhouse" were built on the outermost side to enclose it, making it a huge independent unit.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Japanese invasions were serious on land and sea, and bandits were rampant. No Japanese pirates dared to attack and siege the Xinzhai of the wealthy side, which shows its prestige. The buildings in the village are centered on the Huang Clan Ancestral Hall with the "Five Horses Trailer". There is an open square in front and two "nine-room buildings" in front of and behind. Each building is two stories high and has nine rooms each. On the left and right sides of the ancestral hall are "eight-room houses" residential buildings, and there are two open spaces between them and the "nine-room buildings", which are called "longyan". It is surrounded by residential buildings surrounded by walls, forming a large-scale building complex.
Looking at all the buildings in the village, they echo and respond to each other, some gather and combine, some are large and some are small, have main and secondary, inside and outside, they are combined into an organic whole, forming a magnificent momentum. , gathering without chaos, dividing without scattering, regularity with change, change with order, presenting a kind of harmony and balance of the group.
The villagers proudly introduced: "The original village wall had three more floors than it does now. When the village was built, the old grandmother proposed to build three more floors, saying that it would be demolished by future generations.
After liberation, the superiors ordered the demolition of the wall. The village organized young and strong people to hammer it with picks and irons, and it took a lot of effort to demolish the three floors. In the end, they had to give up because the wall was too strong. ”
When I saw the aerial photos taken by my friends, I was amazed by the strange and rare topography of Shizhai Village. I saw that the ancient Shizhai City is located in a majestic shape protruding from the middle of a flat valley with a radius of ten miles. On a small hill like a lion, the word "Stone City" is written on the city gate. The city is about ten meters high and built around the mountain. It is majestic and majestic, like a silver ring hanging on the neck of a lion. People in Shizhai once described it. : "In front of the city, there is a lake with waves like a mirror, and the hills outside the lake are shaped like overturned cauldrons. They are listed solemnly. The surrounding peaks and mountains are arched and protected, upright and graceful, just like the king's descendants lining up according to etiquette. Outside the city, there are dense trees and many exotic flowers and plants. There are hundreds of species; the orioles are chirping and the birds are noisy, so lively. It is the time when the birds are singing and the flowers are fragrant, and it is spring all year round. Being in Shizhai Village is like entering a fairyland. ”