Daya Hall

Daya Hall

Daya Hall was first built in the third year of Yuanyou during the Northern Song Dynasty (1100 AD), making it 916 years old. It was constructed by Yang Su, a renowned local figure from Danling in the Northern Song Dynasty (and the grandfather-in-law of Li Tao, a Southern Song historian), to fulfill Huang Tingjian’s vision of promoting the realistic poetic style of the poetic sage Du Fu. The hall houses over 300 stone tablets inscribed with Huang Tingjian’s calligraphy of Du Fu’s poems about the Two Rivers and Kuixia regions, and took three years to complete. Huang Tingjian happily named it “Daya Hall,” and wrote “Preface to the Engraving of Du Fu’s Bashu Poems” and “Record of Daya Hall” to document the project. As a result, Daya Hall became widely known across China as a cultural relic embodying the unity of poetry and calligraphy, and the idiom “not fit for the halls of refinement” originates from here.

Daya Hall, a gathering place for Huang Tingjian’s calligraphic treasures and a forest of stone tablets inscribed with Du Fu’s poems, was later destroyed in the wars of the late Ming Dynasty, with no tablets surviving. However, it has been passed down through generations and remains famous far and wide. In 2011, in response to the national call for cultural strength and following the public’s desire to promote Daya culture, the Danling County Committee and County Government extensively consulted the public and decided to reconstruct Daya Hall as a memorial. Construction began in August 2011, and the hall was completed and opened to the public on January 25, 2014.

Located within the 500-acre Daya Hall Park, the hall covers an area of 60 acres, with its core zone spanning 23 acres and featuring a construction area of 3,900 square meters. It includes one main hall and eight exhibition rooms. The museum employs a variety of traditional and modern display techniques to showcase Du Fu’s “poetry,” Huang Tingjian’s “calligraphy,” and Yang Su’s “righteousness,” reviving the millennia-old poetic and calligraphic culture of Daya Hall.

Daya culture is the soul of the county’s prosperity, and its essence lies in elegance. As stated in the Book of Songs: “Elegance means correctness.” From Confucius and Qu Yuan to Du Fu and up to the present, elegance has always represented a humanistic sentiment that cares for people’s livelihoods and concerns itself with the world, reflecting a lofty spirit of concern for the nation and its people. Therefore, Daya symbolizes the most orthodox voice of Chinese civilization. To promote Daya culture today is to promote the positive energy of Chinese culture and to uphold the true voice of the Chinese civilization. “Inclusiveness leads to greatness, harmony creates elegance, resilience builds strength, and striving brings excellence” are the core concepts of Danling’s Daya culture in the new era. Through the construction of Daya Hall, the long and splendid history and culture of Danling are being revived, organically integrating the poetic and calligraphic culture of the Tang and Song Dynasties with contemporary harmonious culture, encouraging people today to learn from their ancestors and carry forward the millennium-old elegance of Daya literature.

The construction of Daya Hall has always adhered to five principles: “people-oriented,” “contemporary relevance,” “artistry,” “economic viability,” and “sustainability.” The completion of Daya Hall has rapidly boosted the development of Danling’s cultural industry, effectively promoting the integration of culture and city, landscape and city, and the building of a high-quality city. Currently, Daya Hall is actively pursuing recognition as a National AAAA-level tourist attraction and is gradually becoming the center of Danling’s cultural industry development and a new cultural landmark of the county.

Source: Danling County Tourism Bureau

Further reading:

· China National Third-Class Museum