Mandarin’s House

Mandarin’s House

Mandarin’s House was built around 1881 as the ancestral home of Zheng Guanying, a renowned modern Chinese thinker, and was funded by his father, Zheng Wenrui. Later, the descendants of the Zheng family scattered, and the house underwent no comprehensive repairs or renovations for a long time, but the structure was preserved intact. In July 2001, the Cultural Affairs Bureau took over the house and began restoration work to retain its original appearance.

Located along Rua da Barra, Mandarin’s House covers a site area of about 4,000 square meters. It is a large Lingnan-style courtyard residence, extending over 120 meters in depth along Rua da Barra. The property mainly consists of two parallel siheyuan (courtyard) buildings, along with auxiliary structures such as servant quarters connected via inner courtyards, and the main gate complex.

The entire building primarily uses blue bricks as the main construction material. The roof features a continuous traditional Chinese pitched design. Building heights vary depending on the function of the area: servant quarters are generally single-storey with flush-gable roofs, some of which have accessible flat sections; the main residential area mostly has two-storey structures, with some reaching three storeys.

The main entrance is located on the northeastern side, in Lung Tau Left Lane. It is a two-storey gatehouse, measuring 13 meters in length and 7.9 meters in depth. It stands separately from the main building complex. The wall of the gate entrance is set back from the eaves inward, with windows on the upper floor and the main gate on the lower level. The eave wall is decorated with traditional Chinese paintings, showcasing a classic traditional Chinese architectural style. The porch interior features a shrine on the wall, and the ceiling is adorned with Western-style plaster decorative patterns. A granite staircase inside the porch leads down to the slightly lower level of the main building complex. Unlike traditional Chinese residences, the entrances to the various sections of the main building complex do not align with the main gate; instead, they all face northwest along a single line, fronted by a wide and long drying courtyard. Midway through the courtyard, another doorway separates the primary and secondary buildings, with the front section allocated to servant quarters and an outer garden, and the rear section housing the main residential area.

The two residential areas are connected by a large inner courtyard. The main residential area mainly consists of two siheyuan-style buildings, each designed with three courtyards deep and three bays wide, interconnected by water alleys. The exterior walls feature plaster reliefs as decorative elements, while the wall bases are constructed from granite. The entrances of the buildings, especially the two main ones, adopt the same recessed treatment as the gatehouse—set back from the eaves and not aligned with the exterior wall. To emphasize their importance, the door frames are made of granite, with the most significant entrance even featuring a double granite frame design. The interiors of the buildings generally follow traditional Chinese layouts, but the position of the main hall differs from the conventional ground-floor placement—it is situated on the second floor. The entire hall occupies a space of three bays in width and one courtyard in depth, structured with a traditional post-and-lintel wooden framework.