The Dacheng Hall of the Confucius Temple in the Old Town

The Dacheng Hall of the Confucius Temple in the Old Town

The Dacheng Hall of the Confucius Temple in the Old Town is a cultural tourism attraction.

The Dacheng Hall of the Confucius Temple in the Old Town

The Dacheng Hall is situated in the old county seat of Laicheng Town—now the Laicheng market area—and was built during the Song Dynasty. It is a county-level cultural heritage site. As the main hall of the Confucius Temple (also called the Imperial College), a place for worshipping “the Great Sage and Foremost Teacher Confucius,” its construction began in the third year of the Baixi era of the Song Dynasty (1255), when Ji Yingyan, the county clerk, temporarily administered the county and established the college. It was renovated in the first year of the Xianchun era (1265), and underwent repairs in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. It was refurbished in the seventh year of the Daoguang era (1827) and has not been maintained since. The Confucius Temple faces south and is laid out as a quadrangle courtyard complex in three sections, covering a width of 34 meters and a depth of 150 meters, with a total area of 5,100 square meters.

The Dacheng Hall features a double-eaved hip-and-gable roof and a hybrid beam-frame structure of through-tenon and raised-beam styles. It has a corridor-style layout, with corridors 1.84 meters wide all around. The hall is five bays wide (20.52 meters) and three bays deep (10.82 meters), with a floor area of 355 square meters. Its beams, bracket sets, eaves boards, doors, and partitions are all adorned with carvings and painted designs. Inside the hall are the spirit tablets of Confucius and the Seventy-Two Disciples. The front terrace is 14.10 meters wide, 7.07 meters deep, and 1.04 meters high, with three sides built from dry-laid stone carvings and stairs on all sides. The central stairway on the front features a bas-relief of two dragons playing with a pearl, with stone lions at the corners and carvings of the Eight Immortals along the edges. On either side of the main hall are two corridors, covering an area of 169 square meters, each with five bays and housing the spirit tablets of 3,000 disciples. The middle courtyard spans 717.52 square meters. In front of the courtyard is the Ji Gate (later renamed the Dacheng Gate, covering 176 square meters). In front of the Dacheng Gate is the front courtyard, spanning 756 square meters, with a central heavenly pool and the so-called “Number One Scholar Bridge” (now filled in and turned into the playground of Laicheng Primary School). The area is enclosed by high walls, with three gates at the front: the left-side Ritual Gate and the right-side Righteousness Gate, and the central Number One Scholar Gate (currently sealed and to be opened only when someone from Chengmai becomes a Number One Scholar). In front of the gate stands a stone inscription reading “All civil and military officials must dismount here,” which has been relocated and its current location is unknown. The Dacheng Hall, the terrace, and the Dacheng Gate remain in their original form, while the rest are in ruins.

Source: Party History Research Office of the CPC Hainan Provincial Committee