Fenglin Village

Fenglin Village

Fenglin Village is located on the eastern side of the middle reaches of the Nanxi River, facing Yan tou Village across the river. It is known as the “First Village of Nanxi” and the “Little Wenzhou.”

Fenglin Village has fully preserved the “Gate of Xu Yinpei’s Righteousness,” built in 1484 during the 20th year of the Chenghua reign of Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty. This gate enshrines an imperial edict from Emperor Xiaozong commending the fraternal love of the Xu brothers, hence it is commonly called the Gate of the Imperial Edict. The structure is a two-story pavilion with three bays, featuring a hip-and-gable roof on the upper level and a lower waist eave.

Thirteen meters to the south, across from it, lies a pond called Shizhimen Lake, which is 26.7 meters long from east to west and 7 meters wide from north to south. In the center of the lake stands a rectangular pavilion. During the Qing Dynasty and the Republican era, Shizhimen Street was the most bustling commercial street in the middle reaches of the Nanxi River. Centered around the Gate of the Imperial Edict and extending east and west, it stretched over 500 meters in length and averaged about 3.5 meters in width, serving as the village’s main axis.

The village walls were built in the mid-Northern Song Dynasty and feature 12 gates around their perimeter. The east gate is inscribed “Zilai Gate,” the south “Laixun Gate,” the west “Lingquan Gate,” and the north “Taiping Gate.” There are also distinctive ancient pavilions such as Guangyao Pavilion, Furong Pavilion, Fengling Pavilion, Xiaozi Pavilion, and Zu’ai Pavilion.

A notable feature of Fenglin Village’s architecture is the large number of ancestral halls. The village has 36 ancestral halls of various sizes, 27 of which still remain. Most are located along the edges of the village, with the oldest being the “Bafang Ancestral Hall” of Xu Wenhui (1333–1396), the ninth-generation ancestor of the Xu clan of Fenglin. Despite enduring over 600 years of weathering, it has retained its original appearance. During the Republican era, some ancestral halls were repurposed as government offices and schools but were later burned down by Japanese forces.

Background: Originally established in the early Tang Dynasty. The village now has over a thousand households. Fenglin Village was originally inhabited by more than thirty surnames, including Liu, Mu, Hang, Feng, Ke, Zhu, Guo, Jiang, Wang, and Mu. In 1106, during the fifth year of the Chongning reign of Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty, Xu Wengyi, the seventh-generation ancestor of the Xu clan of Yubei, won first place in a peony poetry contest and married into the Ke family, becoming the founding ancestor of the Fenglin Xu clan. From then on, the family prospered and grew. By the late Qing Dynasty, the town had reached its peak with “over a thousand households and several thousand able-bodied men,” marking a period of great flourishing. Today, the entire village is inhabited solely by the Xu clan.