Ninety-Nine Rooms of Wushan

Ninety-Nine Rooms of Wushan

The Ninety-Nine Rooms of Wushan is located in the central part of Wushan Village, Xinwei Town. Built during the Qing Dynasty, it faces east and sits west. It consists of two main blocks — a front and a rear house — with a central courtyard and side wings. On the south and north sides of the main houses, there are two rows of slightly shorter wing rooms. In front of the main house lies a stone-paved courtyard with a central gate, flanked by smaller side wings (called “ju tou”). The entire complex is massive in scale, with a total width of 45 meters, a depth of 30 meters, and a land area of 1,350 square meters. The front block has five bays spanning 18 meters, featuring a recessed porch and a central hall in the middle, with side and end rooms serving as wing chambers on both sides. It has a flush-gable roof, with the principal and side bays slightly taller, crowned by double swallowtail ridges and tiled slopes, with three rows of tubular tiles on each side. The rear block spans five bays in width and three bays in depth, with a central hall and side and end rooms serving as wing chambers. It uses a post-and-lintel beam frame, a flush-gable roof, and double swallowtail ridges. The left and right wing rooms each have a central corridor that connects to the main courtyard through water-drainage passages, dividing each row of wing rooms into two smaller courtyards at the front and back, forming one large central courtyard surrounded by four smaller three-sided courtyards. The wing rooms all feature flush-gable roofs with swallowtail ridges (except for the northeast corner, which has a rolled shed roof). Due to its grand scale, this structure is locally referred to as the “Ninety-Nine Rooms.” During construction, it employed stone wall bases, red brick “fighting walls,” interlayered brick-and-tile walls, and red brick window frames, showcasing the unique characteristics of Southern Fujian’s red-brick residential architecture.