Miaogouhou and Hengxing Stone Archways

Miaogouhou and Hengxing Stone Archways

Miaogouhou and Hengxing Stone Archways are listed as Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level.

Miaogouhou and Hengxing Stone Archways, based on architectural analysis, were built around the Southern Song to Yuan dynasties and are known as the earliest existing stone archways. Both serve as tomb pathway archways, but the pathways themselves have been destroyed and the identities of those buried remain unknown. They are both two-pillar, single-bay, single-story, wood-like structured stone archways facing west. The former uses “Meiyuan Stone” from western Yinxian County, while the latter uses “Yia’ao Stone” from Yiqianhu Town in Yinxian County.

The Miaogouhou Stone Archway is located on the southern slope of the Miaogouhou Mountain foothills in Hanling Village, Dongqianhu Town. Facing west, it has two pillars and a single-bay, single-story wood-like structure. It is 3.29 meters wide and 3.28 meters in pillar height, featuring a single-eave hip-and-gable roof with pronounced upturned corners, beast-mask drip tiles, and double-lipped plate tiles.

The Hengxing Stone Archway is situated at Xianren Mountain in Sheng’ao, Hengxing Village, Wuxiang Town, Yinxian County, also facing west. It is a two-pillar, single-bay, single-story wood-like structure, 2.5 meters in width. Its basic structure is similar to that of the Miaogouhou Stone Archway. Differences include a lower-positioned beam, inserted directly into the pillars, absence of a pu-pai-fang (auxiliary beam), use of inserted brackets (hua-gong), and rectangular grooves on the beam carved in the "seven reds and eight whites" pattern.

Miaogouhou and Hengxing Stone Archways provide valuable examples for studying such structures in China prior to the Ming Dynasty and hold high historical value. These two archways are significant representations of the transitional period when China’s wooden archways evolved into stone ones. It is a widely accepted academic view that China’s stone archways evolved from wooden ones. Both Miaogouhou and Hengxing Stone Archways imitate wooden structures in both construction and detailed craftsmanship, differing greatly from those built during the Ming and Qing periods. Many features of these two archways align closely with the Song Dynasty’s Yingzao Fashi (Treatise on Architectural Methods), making them important examples for studying ancient architecture in the Jiangnan region during that time.

In 2001, Miaogouhou and Hengxing Stone Archways, as ancient architecture from the Song and Yuan periods, were approved by the State Council to be included in the fifth batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level.

Further Reading:

· Fifth Batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level