Feng Shui Story: How did the Feng Shui layout of the Shanxi Merchants’ Courtyard come about?
Introduction: Shanxi merchants were merchants in ancient Shanxi. They left behind a rich architectural heritage for China, including the famous Qiao Family Courtyard, Chang Family Manor, Cao Family Sandutang, etc. In this issue of Feng Shui stories, let’s talk about how the Feng Shui layout of the Shanxi Merchants’ Courtyard came about. Let’s find out together! There are many legendary stories in Mr. Shui Mo’s Feng Shui stories that you have never heard of. Let’s take a look at them below.What is the Feng Shui layout of the Jinshang Courtyard?"A good house brings prosperity to the people" has been the pursuit of residential culture by the Chinese for thousands of years. Feng Shui is a landscape evaluation system for finding auspicious locations for buildings, and is one of the principles of geographical site selection and layout in ancient China.Chinese-style architecture is mostly composed of buildings surrounding space, while Western-style architecture is just the opposite, with the building in the center and the space surrounding the building. Most Chinese houses are symmetrical on the left and right. The symmetrical design of spatial position is an organic imitation of human nature. This imitation can bring sensory pleasure and emotional cultivation to humans, and thus produce aesthetic feelings that are beneficial to physical and mental health. Therefore, Chinese courtyards mostly adopt a main and side structure, with the main courtyard being higher on top and lower on the bottom, the atrium being wide, and the hierarchy being clear. The main house is high, while the wing rooms are low and smaller than the main house. From the palace to the common people, this pattern was followed. The mansions of Shanxi merchants also had these characteristics and were preserved for a long time. In the mansions of Shanxi merchants, rooms with good feng shui are the first choice for respected elders. The main room in the main courtyard not only has a higher roof than the wing rooms, but also has one or two more steps. The owner of the house lives, receives guests and discusses matters here. The upstairs is generally used as a Buddhist temple and book storage. The wing rooms in the upper courtyard are arranged with the elder brother on the east and the younger brother on the west, and the lower courtyard is arranged in the same way for the next generation. The south building is an embroidery building or a cutting room, with maids living on the lower floor and young ladies living on the upper floor. Their residences, whether the front hall or the hall, are obviously retracted backwards, intended to reflect the concept of "women who bow their heads and retreat cannot make a name for themselves" in etiquette. Young ladies enter the cabinet at the age of 13 and can only go downstairs when they get married. The embroidery building is often connected to the dining room for the convenience of dining. As for the accounting office, whether it is the main house or the wing rooms, there are usually no steps in front of the door. Even if there are steps, it is only one level, to show that the accounting office's position is lower than that of the owner. The side courtyard where servants, bodyguards, cooks and others live is a row of low east-west rooms built close to the walls of the main courtyard. The door bolts leading to the main courtyard are installed on one side of the main courtyard, so that the master can visit the servants' residences at any time, but the servants are not allowed to enter and leave the main courtyard at will. The concepts of superiority and inferiority, and the hierarchy are all based on Feng Shui. The Shanxi merchants' houses look like castles, facing the street on three sides and surrounded by closed brick walls more than three meters high, with parapets and exploratory openings on top. The main gate faces east and has a rooftop. The middle city gate is a cave-style doorway. Inside the gate is a stone-paved corridor with guardrails on both sides. At the end is the ancestral hall, which is a temple-style structure. All the branch courtyards in the compound are arranged in a "complete house" layout. Building houses in the east, west, south and north of the courtyard is called "complete house". There is a local proverb that says "If there is east but no west, there will be no old wife; if there is west but no east, there will be no husband; only in the north room, there will be a king but no ministers." Although there are several symmetrical courtyards, their respective gates have to be moved to the side. Feng Shui believes that door facing door is like mouth facing mouth. If the big mouth eats the small mouth, it will lead to discord between father and son, quarrels between brothers, disharmony between sisters-in-law, and jealousy between aunts and sisters-in-law. The courtyard is arranged strictly according to the Da Younian Method, which is also called the Nine Star Flying Palace Method. It is one of the most commonly used Feng Shui rules in Yangzhai Feng Shui and is the theoretical basis of the Eight House Feng Shui. According to this theory, the main room in a good location is used for the family's living, while the main room in an inauspicious location can be used as a warehouse or toilet. Therefore, the north wing is mostly used as a storage room, and the southeast wing is used for toilets. The famous Qiao Family Courtyard consists of six courtyards, three in the north and three in the south. The northern three courtyards are arranged in a counterclockwise manner, with Zhen Gua (east), Kan Gua (north), and Qian Gua (northwest) arranged counterclockwise from due east to northwest. The southern three courtyards are built in a clockwise manner, with Xun Gua (southeast), Li Gua (south), and Kun Gua (southwest) built in sequence from southeast to southwest, and finally intersecting at Dui Gua (due west). Why were six large courtyards built? The four directions up and down are called "Liuhe", which means perfection. In addition, six is homophonic with "lu", which is a metaphor for good luck, that is, "sixty-six great success". In addition, the Six Courts have the "Six Yao" decree, and the Six Yao combined with the Eight Trigrams can account for the full range of Feng Shui. The large courtyards built on the plains are all arranged on both sides with the east-west roads as the axis. According to the Feng Shui theory of "Green Dragon in the east, White Tiger in the west, it is better to let the Green Dragon be three points higher than to let the White Tiger be one level lower", the Minglou above the gate is generally very tall, and the inner courtyards gradually rise from west to east. In order to comply with the Feng Shui principle of north higher and south lower, the tallest buildings in the courtyard are all built at the north end. The Cao Family Courtyard was built facing the mountain, and for this purpose three "sacrificial pavilions" symbolizing pigs, cows, and sheep were added to the three main buildings at the north end to intimidate the Nanshan Mountain. Combined with the river on the east side, it became a treasure land of "blessings as vast as the East Sea and longevity as great as the Nanshan Mountain". Jingshan is the Feng Shui mountain of the Forbidden City, with five pavilions built on it. However, the Cao family, a Shanxi merchant, also wanted to build three pavilions, which was very grand. Different from Qiao's Courtyard, Qu's Courtyard, Cao's Courtyard, Chang's Courtyard and others which were built on flat ground, Wang's Courtyard was built on a slope and consists of two parts, Gaojia Cliff and Hongmen Fort, which face each other from east to west. From the outside, it follows the terrain of the mountain and changes with the shape, with layers of buildings and courtyards in an orderly manner; inside, there are cave dwellings and tiled houses, which are connected to each other, with elegant decorations and rich connotations. Although it is built on a slope, it still forms tall courtyards. The large and small courtyards are both perfectly matched and independent. Similar ones include Zhang Family Courtyard in Yangquan, Shi Family Courtyard in Pingding, Shuai Family Courtyard in Fenxi, and commercial houses around Chikou. Another characteristic of Shanxi merchants' houses is the large number of various types of screen walls. The one placed outside the door is called a screen wall, and the one inside the door is called a screen wall. Screen walls and shadow walls are both feng shui walls. On the screen wall opposite the gate of Qiao's Courtyard, there is an elaborate brick carving of "A Hundred Longevity Pictures". The one hundred "longevity" characters on the pictures have been abstracted into symbolic patterns. It is said that it was written by the son-in-law of Qiao Zhiyong, a representative figure of Shanxi merchants, and the famous Shanxi calligrapher Chang Zanchun. Apart from the value of its calligraphy, the two couplets on the side of the wall are quite intriguing. They were inscribed in seal script by Zuo Zongtang, "Reduce human desires to restore the destruction of reason; accumulate morality and be able to write articles", and the title of the couplet is "Lu He". There are three exquisite brick screen walls in Qiao Family Courtyard: one is a "turtle back brocade" engraved with traditional patterns, which obviously implies longevity like the years of a turtle; one is a calligraphy wall of Zhao Tieshan, with the main text divided into Li script and the signature in Wei Kai, which is a copy of "Provincial Precepts" by Lu Zuqian of the Southern Song Dynasty, which aims to warn family members to be self-conscious and self-disciplined and abide by the law; and another is the screen wall of Fude Temple, which is a group of relief patterns with auspicious phoenix trees, pine trees, sika deer, Shoushan stones, etc. Fude Temple is the land temple, and Fude means to receive blessings and accumulate virtue. The Chang family compound has the largest number of screen walls, as many as ninety-nine and eighty-one, including eight screen walls, thirteen screen walls, thirty-two flower walls, and twenty-eight wall hangings. The flower wall hangings belong to the category of screen walls. There is also a "Hundred Longevity Wall" in the ancestral hall, with 240 seal characters inscribed on it, which is a homonym of "longevity 240 characters", which means "longevity 240 minutes". Other fine products include the Family Precepts Wall, the Picking Wild Vetch Wall, the Three Stars Wall, the Deer and Crane Wall, the Kirin Jar, the Temple Jar, the Four Seasons Wall, the Landscape Wall, etc. Feng Shui is all about guiding qi. There is a saying in "Water Dragon Sutra" that "going straight will harm the population". Qi cannot go straight into the living room or bedroom, otherwise it will be unlucky. The screen wall has the function of slowing down the airflow, and it conforms to the Feng Shui principle of "curves are graceful". At the same time, it slows down the whistling airflow and coordinates it with the energy inside the house. This is the so-called "energy does not disperse" in Feng Shui. The screen wall can block the line of sight, avoid qi rush and keep qi flowing smoothly, so it is very important. In addition, some Shanxi merchants’ houses often have screens placed in the halls connecting the inner and outer courtyards, which serve the same function as a screen wall. How did “Dejuquan” become “Quanjude”I believe everyone of us has heard of the famous "Quanjude", but we may not know how this name came about.When Yang Quanren, the founder of Quanjude, first arrived in Beijing, he sold live chickens and ducks on Roushi Street outside Qianmen, and his business became more and more prosperous. Every day when he went to the meat market to set up a stall to sell chickens and ducks, he had to pass by a dried fruit shop called "Dejuquan". Although the shop's sign is eye-catching, its business is declining. By the third year of the Tongzhi reign (1864), the shop was on the verge of bankruptcy. The shrewd Yang Quanren seized this opportunity, took out his savings of many years, and bought the "Dejuquan" store. Now that he had his own shop, what name should he give it? Yang Quanren invited a Feng Shui master to discuss the matter. The Feng Shui master walked around the store twice and said, "This is truly a great Feng Shui site! Look at the two small alleys on both sides of the store, they are like two sedan poles. If you build a building there in the future, it will be like a sedan chair carried by eight people. Your future will be limitless!" The Feng Shui master added, "However, this store was very unlucky in the past, and the bad luck is hard to get rid of. Unless you reverse the old name of 'Dejuquan' and call it 'Quanjude', you can get rid of your bad luck and embark on a smooth road." The Feng Shui master's words made Yang Quanren smile. The name "Quanjude" was exactly what he wanted. Firstly, his name contained the word "Quan", and secondly, "Jude" means gathering virtues, so he could advertise himself as a virtuous person in business. So he named the store "Quanjude", and due to his good management, the name has been passed down to this day. Summary: The above article is the specific content of this issue’s Feng Shui story. You can take a look at it. If you want to know more Feng Shui stories, you are welcome to visit Mr. Shui Mo! |
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