Ancestral Hall of the Qi Clan - Zhiyuan Hall

The Ancestral Hall of the Qi Clan - Zhiyuan Hall

The Ancestral Hall of the Qi Clan - Zhiyuan Hall is located in Xiefu Administrative Village, Hujang Township, Ganxian District, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, about 50 kilometers north of the county seat. Originally built and later renovated in the 32nd year of the Guangxu reign during the Qing Dynasty (1906), the structure faces south and is constructed of brick and wood. It is 21 meters wide and 46.8 meters deep, covering a floor area of 982.8 square meters. The building features a post-and-lintel timber frame and a flush-gable roof, tiled flooring, five bays in width, three courtyards, and four halls. The entrance gate is modeled after a memorial archway, with six pillars across five bays and five stories. It is adorned with grey-relief carvings depicting figures, flowers, birds, animals, and geometric patterns. The central bay features a plaque board with an inscription reading “Hereditary Nobility” in regular script, read top to bottom, and “Ancestral Hall of the Qi Clan” in right-to-left regular script. On either side of the main gate stand a pair of drum stones. The secondary bays to the north and south feature three-bay, three-story gateways with plaque boards inscribed with “Filial Piety Within” and “Brotherly Respect Without.” Twelve meters to the south stands a red sandstone pillar inscribed with the text “Renovated in the Summer Month of the 32nd Year of the Guangxu Reign, Qing Dynasty” in regular script. Inside the hall are preserved three stone stelae with inscriptions in regular script: the “Stele Preface for the Renovation of the Qi Clan Ancestral Hall” from the 27th year of the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty (1599), the “Seventh Renovation Inscription of Zhiyuan Hall” from the 20th year of the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty (1682), and the “Stele Record of the Renovation of the Qi Clan Spirit Shrine and Donations” from the 45th year of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty (1780). Originally, there was also a stage with an octagonal caisson ceiling, painted with theatrical scenes and floral and insect motifs. The hall underwent nine rounds of maintenance or renovation between the Jingding era of the Song Dynasty and the Guangxu reign of the Qing Dynasty.

This ancestral hall is the ancestral temple of Qi Jiguang, the distinguished national hero and famous anti-Wokou general of the Ming Dynasty. Around 1990, due to the construction of the Wan’an Reservoir, a national key project, the east and west wing rooms were demolished, leaving only the main structure. Among the many Hakka ancestral hall buildings in southern Jiangxi, this one is the most representative. It boasts a grand presence, exquisite architectural craftsmanship, relatively well-preserved condition, a clear historical development trajectory, and a wealth of cultural heritage, making it of high social, cultural, and architectural research value. It was re-designated as a first batch of county-level cultural relic protection units in 2003 and as a provincial-level protected site in 2006.