Dai Zhen Memorial Hall

Dai Zhen Memorial Hall

Dai Zhen Memorial Hall is a cultural relic protection unit of Huangshan City.

Dai Zhen, a native of Longfu in Tunxi, was a renowned philosopher and textual scholar of the Qing Dynasty. The memorial hall is located on Longfu Middle Street and is housed in a Qing-era residential building known as "Yaobi Tower." The site covers an area of 100 square meters and includes a memorial hall, a library tower, and a reading room. The memorial hall houses a statue of Dai Zhen, with a plaque inscribed “Supreme Master of the Age” by Duanmu hanging at the center. Glass display cases in the hall exhibit precious cultural relics such as manuscripts of Dai Zhen’s works and imperial edicts from Emperor Qianlong. On either side of the memorial hall are the library rooms, which house the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, in which Dai Zhen participated, as well as various editions of his works and tens of thousands of volumes of classic Chinese texts spanning Confucian classics, history, philosophy, and literature. The lounge area is furnished with elegant and simple Qing-style furniture and decorated with illustrations depicting Dai Zhen’s life, vividly portraying his challenging journey of scholarly pursuit guided by the principle of “seeking true knowledge to inspire future generations without catering to contemporary trends.”

Dai Zhen Memorial Hall is located on Longfu Middle Street in Tunxi District, Huangshan City, Anhui, covering an area of 427 square meters with two floors, built in the Huizhou architectural style of the Qing Dynasty. The hall is divided into four sections and houses a collection of 9,167 volumes of books owned by Dai Zhen and theoretical works by later scholars researching Dai Zhen. It also carefully preserves over 20 versions of Dai Zhen’s works, all dating from the Republican era, which are currently the earliest extant editions of his writings in China.

Dai Zhen was a famous textual scholar, natural scientist, enlightenment thinker, and philosopher of the Qing Dynasty in China. He excelled in textual criticism, philology, and phonology, delved deeply into astronomy, geography, mathematics, and hydraulics, and pioneered the Anhui School of Classical Studies within the Qian-Jia朴学 (Practical Learning) movement. He shifted from textual research in classical studies to the exploration of Confucian principles, providing incisive critiques of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, reinterpreting the original intent of Confucianism, and thus exerting profound social influence.

Tunxi was the hometown of Dai Zhen, the eminent thinker, classical scholar, and philosopher of the Qing Dynasty. Dai Zhen, styled Dongyuan, was born in 1723 and died in 1777. He passed the imperial examination for the juren degree at the age of 40 and was summoned to serve as a compiler for the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries at the age of 51. Dai Zhen had a wide range of research interests and produced a substantial body of work, achieving particular distinction in philosophy and practical learning. He was a representative figure of the Anhui School within the Qian-Jia School.

Dai Zhen not only enlightened future generations with his brilliant thinking but also benefited his local community through practical actions such as constructing the Zhutang Dam to control mountain floods. Over two hundred years ago, during the plum rain season each year, floods from the Zhutang area between Huashan Ridge and Yangmei Mountain in Tunxi would destroy crops along the way and inundate Tunxi, causing great suffering among the people. At the time, locals believed that the disasters were caused by a mythical turtle spirit in Zhutang. The young Dai Zhen, skeptical of superstitions, volunteered to investigate the flood scene and proposed a flood prevention and control plan. Together with local intellectuals, he raised funds to build a 10-meter-high stone dam at Zhutang, with a crest 43 meters long and 22 meters wide, capable of storing about one million cubic meters of water. A stone sluice gate (valve) was constructed at the pond inlet, and drainage channels were dug under the dam leading directly to the Xin’an River. The gate was normally closed to facilitate fish and duck farming and irrigation of farmland. During severe floods, it was opened to release water, preventing farmland from being waterlogged and Tunxi from being flooded. Dai Zhen became widely celebrated locally. In 1965, when Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh visited Tunxi accompanied by [Comrade], he was excited to hear about how Dai Zhen had used science and technology to build water conservancy projects and benefit the people two hundred years earlier, praising: “Truly remarkable!” The Zhutang Dam remains well-preserved to this day. With deep waters and serene surroundings, surrounded by steep mountains, boating here is reminiscent of the rivers of Sichuan. Hence, it was historically famed as the “Zhutang Gull Rain” scenic view. Huashan Ridge, where Zhutang is located, has been turned into Dai Zhen Park, offering visitors a great place for fishing, boating, and leisure. The park features Huizhou-style architecture, Huizhou-style potted plants, a zoo, and a statue of Dai Zhen.

Dai Zhen (1723–1777), styled Shenxiu or Dongyuan, and also known as Gaoxi, was a native of Xiuning, Anhui. Born into a family of small merchants in Huizhou, he passed the imperial examination for the juren degree during the Qianlong reign but repeatedly failed to pass the higher-level jinshi exams. Later, he worked on compiling the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries and was awarded an honorary jinshi degree in the palace examination, subsequently serving as a shujishi (a bachelor in the Hanlin Academy). As a youth, he was diligent and inquisitive. As an adult, he conducted in-depth studies in classical studies, astronomy, calendrics, geography, phonology, and philology, becoming an outstanding materialist philosopher, master of textual criticism, and synthesizer of the Huizhou School of Practical Learning in the 18th century.

Dai Zhen studied in private school as a child and extensively read the Confucian classics and elementary learning texts. From the age of seventeen, he aspired to explore… More detailed information on Dai Zhen ++