The Zhao Family Courtyard

The Zhao Family Courtyard

The Zhao Family Courtyard is located on a mountain terrace about 10 kilometers south of Wangjiagou Township, Wangcang County. It was newly discovered during a cultural relics survey conducted by the Wangcang County Cultural Relics Survey Team in Wangjiagou Township. This site is a distinctive Qing Dynasty–era building, also known as the Zhao Family Workshop. Situated at an elevation of 950 meters and backed by Anziliang Mountain, the courtyard is built along the mountainside. It is a two-courtyard, quadrangle-style residential building constructed in the 19th year of the Daoguang reign during the Qing Dynasty (1839). Originally covering an area of approximately 1,800 square meters, the surviving structure is a single quadrangle spanning around 760 square meters. It consists of a main house, side rooms, and a mountain gate that form a unified whole. The side rooms and the mountain gate feature “concave”-shaped corridors (commonly called Minglou).

The Main House

The main house is built on a 1.2-meter-high platform and is a single-eave, suspended-roof style building with small blue tiles. It is five bays wide, with a total width of 24.5 meters and a total height of 6.6 meters. The roof frame is of the through-tenon construction type, featuring nine column holes with four columns reaching the ground. It has a ceiling, and the roof is covered with small blue tiles. The roof ridge is made of brick, with the central ridge on the main hall now destroyed—its exterior is densely inlaid with fragments of blue-and-white porcelain bowls, and the ends are adorned with upturned tails. The space between the eave columns and the golden columns (older eave columns) forms a corridor, and the center of the main hall features double wooden doors. The side bays and wing rooms each have single small doors. Between the two golden columns (older eave columns) is a wooden partition wall with three latticed windows, each with intricately carved openwork designs that remain well-preserved. The carvings depict various auspicious motifs such as happiness, prosperity, longevity, joy, celebration, and filial piety. Above the main hall’s entrance are two plaques—one of which had its inscriptions obliterated during the Cultural Revolution, while the plaque on the north side reads “Virtue Extending from Xiangshan” and includes its gifting date: the 24th year of the Daoguang reign (1844), with Zhao Guoqing as the recipient. The main hall is fully ceiled, with a shrine in the center featuring lion-head-shaped legs. The rear wall is painted with murals, now barely visible due to smoke damage. The corridor ceiling is mainly of the rolled-awning style, though the northern section shows severe damage. The columns are all wooden, round, unchamfered, and left in their natural form. The column bases are carved from single pieces of bluestone in censer-like shapes, with short feet, flat bases, and tops engraved with patterns of deer, lions, and human figures, all exquisitely sculpted and uniquely styled. The partition walls in the main hall, side bays, and wing rooms are all made of wooden panels.

The Mountain Gate

The mountain gate is five bays wide, with a total width of 29.1 meters and a total height of 6.8 meters. The central bay serves as the main entrance, originally flanked by two gates (now removed). The upper part of the central bay resembles a theater stage, featuring carved decorations and a rolled-awning-style ceiling. The mountain gate's central and side bays form a continuous structure. The side rooms are located on either side of the main house, each measuring 10.25 meters in width and 7.8 meters in height. They follow through-tenon construction, with four columns reaching the ground, and all have Minglou structures with rolled-awning ceilings above. The side of the main house contains living quarters. The forked brackets (commonly called “cengzi”) under the front eaves' through-tenons are all intricately hollow-carved, featuring dragon head and phoenix tail motifs. The original ridges over the side rooms are mostly no longer present.

The courtyard measures 10.25 meters in length and 9.3 meters in width. The step stones and courtyard flagstones are all polished bluestone and show no signs of wear despite more than 160 years of use.

The Zhao Family Courtyard features a unique architectural style and has been home to eight generations of the Zhao family. Among the ancient residences documented in Wangcang County, this courtyard stands out as the most architecturally refined.