Former Residence of Huang Jingren (Zhongze)

Former Residence of Huang Jingren (Zhongze)

The former residence of Huang Jingren (Zhongze) is a cultural relic protection unit of Changzhou City.

The former residence of Huang Jingren (Zhongze) is located at No. 35 Shenxian Guannong, Mashanbu. The front entrance is at No. 86 Mashanbu (now No. 62). The residence is a closed-style quadrangle courtyard, featuring two sedan-chair halls, three nanmu wood halls, the back section of the flower hall, and side rooms on the east and west. The west side room served as the poet’s study, “Liangdang Xuan,” a Ming Dynasty structure originally fitted with floor-to-ceiling clear-pane windows under the eaves, which have now been replaced with glass windows. The main hall and courtyard have been demolished. The municipal government has designated the remaining “Liangdang Xuan” as a cultural relic protection unit. The famous calligrapher Liu Haisu inscribed the plaque for Liangdang Xuan.

Huang Jingren (1749–1783), courtesy name Hanyong, also known as Zhongze or Zhongze, with the alias Xili, and self-styled as Lufei Zi, was a descendant of the Northern Song poet Huang Tingjian and a renowned poet of the Qing Dynasty. Huang Jingren authored the 22-volume Collected Works of Liangdang Xuan (including two supplementary volumes), the four-volume Bamboo Sleep Ci, the two-volume As If No Record, and several volumes of Xili Seal Drafts. He was renowned alongside fellow locals Sun Yuangu, Hong Liangji, and Zhao Weixin, collectively known as the “Sun, Hong, Huang, and Zhao.” His poetry collection, Collected Works of Liangdang Xuan, has been published in over twenty editions. — One of his poems includes the line: “Huang Zhongze of my hometown, a night of wind and snow brings bitter cold”; the modern writer Yu Dafu once penned a short historical novel about Huang Jingren titled The Stone Crag.

In 1983, the literary and art circles of Changzhou held events to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Huang Zhongze’s death. Descendants of Huang Jingren, the overseas brothers Huang Hexi and Huang Heshu, out of love for their motherland’s cultural heritage, donated 244 original woodblocks of the precious cultural relic — the Complete Works of Liangdang Xuan — to the Changzhou Museum for preservation. In April 1964, it was listed as a municipal-level cultural relic protection unit.