Cheng Rangping’s Ancestral Home

Cheng Rangping’s Ancestral Home

Cheng Rangping’s Ancestral Home is a Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

Cheng Rangping’s Ancestral Home is located in Pingshan Village, Linjiang Town, Lucheng District, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Built in the late Qing Dynasty, it faces east and consists of a gate tower, wing rooms, and a main house, forming a two-courtyard compound structure. The gate tower is a brick imitation wooden structure, single-bay with a hanging hip roof. The roof is covered with small tubular tiles, featuring drip tiles and curved plaster scroll patterns along the ridge. The façade is plastered. The surrounding wall is connected to the gate tower, forming an inward-facing “eight” shape, with the lower part built from block stones and the upper part from plastered bricks. The front courtyard’s southern wing room is a three-bay, two-story wooden building with board tiles and a gray ridge, featuring a double-eave upper floor. The ground floor has front and rear corridors, while the second floor features a board-paneled façade. The northern wing room has been converted into a two-bay, three-story brick building. The front house has seven bays in width, is single-story, and constructed with wood. It has a hanging hip roof, board tiles, and a gray ridge with upturned ends and plaster scroll patterns. The central bay has a depth of seven pillars, using a mixed beam-frame structure of raised beams and through-tenons, with the central pillar reaching the floor and dividing the space, front and rear corridors, a boat-shaped canopy in the front corridor, and a flat ceiling in the rear corridor. Behind the screen door is an inner room with covered beam frames. In front of the main door of the central bay is a cantilevered bracket construction. The southern wing room in the rear courtyard is a two-bay, single-story wooden building with board-paneled walls and partial reconstruction. The second-courtyard main house consists of seven bays plus two lean-to rooms, a seven-rafter wooden building with a flush gable roof. It has board tiles and a gray ridge with ridge decorations. The central bay has a depth of seven pillars and fourteen rafters, using a mixed beam-frame structure of raised beams and through-tenons, with the central pillar reaching the floor, a front boat-shaped canopy corridor, and a flat ceiling on the rear corridor. A passageway is located to the south of the main house, with a simple gate tower to the east of the passageway. The flooring is made of rammed earth.

Cheng Rangping is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Gabon, Africa. His father, Cheng Zhiping, was among the first generation of overseas Chinese in Gabon. After becoming Gabon’s Foreign Minister, Cheng Rangping was committed to promoting friendship between China and Gabon, and he once served as the President of the 59th United Nations General Assembly.

Cheng Rangping’s Ancestral Home is relatively well-preserved overall, with exquisitely carved beam frames and lattice windows, holding certain cultural and artistic value.

In August 2005, it was listed as part of the Fifth Batch of Cultural Relics Protection Units of Wenzhou City by the Wenzhou Municipal People's Government.

Protection Level: Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Unit

Era: Qing Dynasty

Category: Important Modern Historical Sites and Representative Buildings

Protected Area: East bounded by the west bank of the stream to the east, south bounded by Zhongjia Road Lane 66, west bounded by the adjacent alleyway to the west, north bounded by the adjacent alleyway to the north.

Building Control Zone: East bounded by Linxi Road and buildings along the east side of Linxi Road, south bounded by Yiyang Road, west bounded by Yishan Road, north bounded by Linxi Bridge and the street to the south of the China-Gabon Friendship Hall.

Further Reading:

· Sixth Batch of Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units