Tranquil Abode Courtyard

Tranquil Abode Courtyard

Tranquil Abode Courtyard is a cultural heritage site protected by Yinzhou District.

Tranquil Abode Courtyard is located at No. 137, North of Huating Bridge, Shaojia Village, Fuming, Jiangdong District, Ningbo. According to two elderly locals, the villagers refer to it as Huating Wall Gate, and it was built before the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. The original owner of the residence moved to Taiwan before 1949 and never returned. The entire compound is enclosed by white walls, covering an area of about one mu. It consists of a corridor hall, rear-facing rooms, the main building, and auxiliary rooms. The front section has six bays, comprising three-bay corridor halls and three-bay rear-facing rooms. The rear main building has five bays and two corridors, featuring a double-eaved, flush-gable roof style. The main gate faces east and is constructed from blue bricks and stone materials. The gate is 4 meters wide and 8 meters high. The upper part of the gatehouse is adorned with relief carvings in blue brick depicting various palace lanterns, flowers and birds, attendants, and other patterns. The lower part of the gate uses light brown stone for the pillars and blue stone slabs for the screen wall. The blue stone panels on both sides of the gate feature recessed carving of the couplet: “Descendants of the Virtuous House of Han” and “Confucian Scholars from Guanzhong.” Directly above the main gate, the four large characters “Anle Site” are engraved in relief. The back of the gatehouse is also inscribed with “Tranquil Abode,” reflecting the owner’s taste and aspirations. As this is a private residence, the latter part of the main building has been modernized. “Anle Site” was established to honor and promote the spirit of the Shao family. This can be inferred from the couplet on either side of the gate. The ancestors of the “Sidu Shao Family” include notable historical figures such as King Wen of Zhou, Duke Shao (Ji Shi), and Shao Pu of the Song Dynasty, making the description “Descendants of the Virtuous House of Han” a fitting one. Meanwhile, “Confucian Scholars from Guanzhong” refers to King Wen of Zhou, the ancestor of the Sidu Shao Family, who created the “Eight Trigrams” and founded the “Book of Changes (I Ching)” — laying the foundation of Chinese Neo-Confucianism. During the Song Dynasty, Shao Yong built upon the Eight Trigrams to establish the School of Image-Number Theory; his son, Shao Bowen, inherited his legacy and became another renowned scholar of Neo-Confucianism. Hence, the title “Confucian Scholars from Guanzhong” is also well-deserved. In 2010, it was designated as one of the first batch of district-level cultural heritage sites by the Jiangdong District People’s Government.