Jiangshang Thatched Cottage

Jiangshang Thatched Cottage

Jiangshang Thatched Cottage is a municipal-level cultural relics protection unit in Nanjing.

Jiangshang Thatched Cottage [Qiaolin Subdistrict, Pukou District, Linpu Village, Shenying Group — 1970s–2000s — Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit] Lin Sanzhi (1898–1989), a master calligrapher of his generation from Wujiang Town, Pukou District, developed a deep love for painting, calligraphy, poetry, and literature from an early age. He styled himself “The Three Obsessives,” studied under renowned masters such as Huang Binhong, and traveled extensively to learn from both ancient art and nature, developing profound artistic skills. In 1973, his cursive script work “Dawn is Breaking in the East” was published on the front page of the first issue of People’s China, causing a huge sensation both domestically and internationally, earning him the title “Contemporary Sage of Cursive Script.” At the age of 22, to create a tranquil space for reading, practicing calligraphy, and painting, Lin built a three-room thatched cottage on a small hill behind his residence, naming it “Sanmu Mountain House,” later renamed “Jiangshang Thatched Cottage.” He planted flowers, grass, bamboo, and trees across twenty acres of hillside land around the cottage. Lin held deep affection for the “thatched cottage,” spending most of his life there. Although he moved to Jiangpu and Nanjing after the age of 50, he would return to stay for periods each year. The cottage and surrounding garden were completely destroyed in 1954 and especially in 1974, leaving only the bamboo that Lin himself had planted beside the cottage. In 1970, the Lin family built a row of five west-facing, east-opening single-story houses several dozen meters south of the original cottage. Lin Sanzhi lived in the two northernmost rooms of this building, which became the actual residence he inhabited in his hometown. In 1998, the government allocated 74 acres of hillside land at the original site of the cottage to the descendants of Lin for their use. The Lin family gradually rebuilt the “Jiangshang Thatched Cottage,” the Lin Sanzhi Former Residence Memorial Hall (rebuilt based on the residence divided among farmers in the 1950s), planted trees, landscaped the gardens, and relocated the statue originally erected at Longhua Square, at the intersection of Pu’zhu Road in Jiangpu Subdistrict and the Ninghe Expressway, here—establishing a privately operated Lin Sanzhi Former Residence Memorial Hall. It was designated as a district-level cultural relics protection unit in 2005 and a municipal-level one in 2006.