Chen Clan Ancestral Hall

Chen Clan Ancestral Hall

The Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is a national AAAA-level tourist attraction, a key cultural relics protection unit in China, and a patriotic education base.

The Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is situated on Zhongshan 7th Road in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. Also known as the "Chen Clan Academy," it was first built in the 14th year of the Guangxu reign during the Qing Dynasty (1888) and completed in the 20th year of Guangxu (1894). It was jointly constructed by the Chen families from 72 counties in Guangdong Province during the late Qing period and is a renowned ancestral hall architecture in Guangdong. The architectural structure of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall can be divided into three axes and three courtyards, with a total construction area of 8,000 square meters.

Guangzhou’s Chen Clan Ancestral Hall

Each section of the ancestral hall is separated by courtyards but also ingeniously connected via corridors and side halls, totaling nine main halls and six courtyards. The overall layout of the ancestral hall is symmetrical, with a mix of solid and void spaces among halls, towers, and pavilions, presenting an imposing momentum. The "Juxian Hall" (Hall of Gathering Virtuous Scholars) is the main hall along the central axis of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall and also the core of the entire architectural complex. The front of the hall features a broad stone terrace, surrounded by stone railings inlaid with iron floral patterns. Initially, upon completion, the Juxian Hall served as a gathering place for clan members, but later it was repurposed as an ancestral shrine, while the side rooms were used for the academy.

Architectural Style

The Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is world-renowned for its exquisite and magnificent decorations. Various forms of ornamentation—including wood carvings, stone carvings, brick carvings, clay sculptures, pottery sculptures, and iron castings—are spread throughout the interior and exterior, adorning the eaves, halls, courtyards, and corridors. There are both large-scale works and delicate small pieces, with decoration styles ranging from bold and unrestrained to refined and intricate, each with its unique characteristics. Especially notable are the clay ridge ornaments on the glazed tile ridges, which extensively depict classical stories and local scenery, creating a dazzling and distinctive visual feast. In front of the ancestral hall, there are six large-scale brick carvings in the form of painted scrolls, each measuring 4 meters in length. These are created by assembling individually carved bluestone bricks. The three-dimensional, multi-layered scenes include mythological tales, landscapes, gardens, flowers, fruits, birds, animals, as well as ancient bronze inscriptions—resembling a folk art gallery. After renovation in 1958, the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall was turned into the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum. Comrade Guo Moruo once wrote a five-character poem after visiting in 1959: “Heavenly work may be emulated by man, yet man’s craft falls short of Heaven’s art. Indeed, to create such a world surpasses reading ten thousand books.”

The architectural decorative arts of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall had already drawn attention from domestic and international architectural experts and scholars as early as the 1920s, with dedicated sections in German and Japanese architectural art monographs. In 1959, it was established as the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum (later renamed the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum in 1994, as it remains today)—the Chen Clan Academy.

In 1980, the state allocated special funds for another major restoration.

Throughout the various halls, corridors, courtyards, doors, windows, railings, roof ridges, brick walls, beams, and shrines of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, one can find a rich array of traditional architectural decorations such as wood carvings, stone carvings, brick carvings, pottery sculptures, lime sculptures, as well as iron casting craftsmanship. These are truly dazzling. Pottery sculpture works are mainly concentrated on the clay ridge ornaments of 19 main halls; brick carvings are most prominent on the outer walls of the east and west wing rooms; lime sculptures are focused on the ridges and corridor eaves, crafted by artisans from Nanhai. Aside from beams, gates, and the screen in the Juxian Hall, the 11 double-layered openwork shrines at the rear are tall in stature, bearing inscriptions such as “Made in the 16th Year of Guangxu,” “Crafted by Liu Dechang of Huilan Bridge,” and “Made by Shitai of Yuanchang Street.” The various decorations in the ancestral hall are richly diverse and cover a wide range of themes.

The Chen Clan Academy, a key national cultural relics protection unit, was completed in the 20th year of Guangxu (1894), jointly funded by the Chen families from 72 counties in Guangdong Province at the time. Its purpose was to provide accommodation for clan members from various regions who came to Guangzhou to take the imperial examinations. The architectural decorations of the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall embody the essence of Guangdong’s folk decorative arts. Skillfully using crafts such as wood carving, brick carving, pottery sculpture, and copper-iron casting, the various carved decorations in the building were primarily created by master craftsmen gathered in Guangzhou by contractors from across the province. According to existing records, artisans involved in the brick carvings included Huang Nanshan, Yang Jianting, and Li Bizhu from Panyu, as well as Chen Zhaonan, Liang Cheng, and Liang Jin from Nanhai County. Among them, Huang Nanshan produced the largest quantity of carvings with extremely fine craftsmanship, earning great fame for his unparalleled skills. The Chen Clan Academy is the largest, best-preserved, and most exquisitely decorated ancient artistic building in Guangdong. It now serves as the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum and is a key national cultural relics protection unit.

Structural Layout

The Chen Clan Academy faces south with its back to the north and follows a traditional Chinese courtyard layout of “three sections, three routes, nine halls, two wings, and multilevel eaves.” It consists of nine halls, six courtyards, ten wing rooms, and long corridors. A newly developed green plaza of over 17,000 square meters lies to the east of the complex. The overall structure is rigorously laid out with a balanced mix of solid and void spaces. The halls are lofty, and the courtyards are spacious and elegant. The central hall, Juxian Hall, serves as the focal point of the academy’s architecture and was where clan members held seasonal worship ceremonies or gatherings for discussions. The hall is majestic, and the courtyard is expansive. The beams are intricately carved, and the large screen in the center of the hall is exquisitely wrought, a masterpiece of wood carving. The pottery ridge ornaments on the roof stretch 27 meters in length and stand 4.2 meters high, crafted by the Wenyu Bi pottery workshop of Shiwan, Guangzhou, during the Qing Dynasty. In front of the hall is a white marble terrace, with stone railings inlaid with iron floral designs. The hall is five bays wide (27 meters) and five bays deep (16.70 meters). It uses dougong (bracket sets) to support the beams, includes corbel brackets, and has 21 beams with six posts extending into front and rear corridors, forming a through-style wooden frame. The middle three bays of the rear golden columns are fitted with 12 double-sided openwork screen doors, while the side bays and the front and rear of the hall are equipped with flower screens. The front of the hall has a moon terrace, with stone railings and stone pillars decorated with Lingnan fruits, inlaid with iron openwork railings. The color contrast is striking, and the decorations are luxurious, highlighting the central status of the Juxian Hall. The east and west halls in the middle section are each three bays wide (14.05 meters) and five bays deep (16.70 meters). They use dougong to support the beams, include corbel brackets, and have 21 beams supported by gable walls with six posts, extending into front and rear corridors. The middle post of the rear golden columns is fitted with four double-sided openwork partition doors, while the secondary posts and the front and rear of the hall are fitted with openwork screens. The rear hall, consisting of three bays, is where the ancestral tablets of the Chen Clan are enshrined and where clan members hold worship ceremonies. The hall is five bays wide (27 meters) and five bays deep (16.40 meters). It uses column-top bracket sets to support the beams, has 21 beams with five posts backed by the rear wall, and features a front rolled-canopy-style corridor. Between the rear eaves columns is a 5-meter-high, over 7-meter-tall wooden openwork shrine enclosure. The east and west halls are each three bays wide (14.05 meters) and five bays deep (16.40 meters). They use column-top bracket sets to support the beams, have 21 beams supported by gable walls with five posts, and feature a front rolled-canopy corridor. The hall doors consist of 14 openwork partition doors. The rear of the hall is also fitted with wooden shrine enclosures, though slightly smaller than those in the main hall. The east and west study rooms and wing rooms are slightly lower and served as the main teaching and reading spaces of the academy. The study rooms are single-bay structures with gable roofs supported by hipped gables. Inside, they are decorated with a combination of flower friezes, partition doors, and floor-length flower screens. The rear windows use stained glass, and a small courtyard lies in front of the study rooms, making the indoor and outdoor spaces particularly bright and airy. The east and west wing rooms all use column-top bracket sets to support rolled-canopy-style roofs with front corridors. The wing rooms are decorated with openwork grilles inlaid with stained glass windows, offering soft lighting and a fresh, elegant ambiance. This represents a unique architectural decorative technique from the late Qing Dynasty in the Pearl River Delta region, showcasing the essence of Guangdong’s folk architectural decorative arts. The interior and exterior architectural components skillfully incorporate decorations using wood carving, stone carving, brick carving, pottery sculpture, lime sculpture, and copper-iron casting. The decorative motifs are diverse, the shapes vivid and lifelike, the carving techniques exquisite, and the style ranges from bold and sketchy to finely detailed. Together with the grand halls, the entire academy is a magnificent and splendid treasury of folk art architecture.

Wood Carving in the Chen Clan Academy is the most numerous, largest in scale, and richest in content. The beams of the first entrance gate feature wood carvings depicting historical stories and folk legends such as “The Queen Mother’s Birthday Celebration” and “The Meeting of Princes.” Notably outstanding is a scene from Romance of the Three Kingdoms showing Cao Cao hosting a grand banquet at the Bronze Sparrow Terrace, depicting him watching military drills while highlighting the intense struggle between Xu Huang and Xu Chu over a brocade robe after their duel.

Additionally, the beams, brackets, and the over 540-meter-long eave boards in various halls and corridors are carved with a variety of melon-and-fruit patterns, floral designs, figures, and animals—all embodying the essence of Guangdong wood carving. Wood carving as a craft: Classified by material, wood carving is a type of folk art. It generally uses tree species with fine, tough, and non-deforming textures such as linden, birch, nanmu, camphor, cypress, ginkgo, agarwood, rosewood, and longan. It typically refers to artworks carved from wood. Hometown of Wood Carving: Dongyang in Zhejiang, known as the hometown of Chinese wood carving, boasts a history of over a thousand years. Exquisite Dongyang wood carvings can be found in the Forbidden City in Beijing as well as in Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Anhui. Dongyang wood carving is primarily a form of relief carving. Its multi-layered carving, scattered-point composition, and retention of flat decorative elements give it a distinctive style. With its light colors and preservation of the natural grain of the wood, it is also known as “white wood carving” (highlighting the natural color of the wood, unlike painted carvings). With a history of over a thousand years since the Tang Dynasty, it is one of the finest folk crafts of the Chinese nation and is hailed as a “national treasure.”

The stone carvings in the Chen Clan Academy mainly use bluestone. They are commonly found on corridor pillars, architraves, arched doors, railings, dadoes, plinths, and steps. The stone railings on the terrace in front of the Juxian Hall are typical of the academy’s stone carving decorations. They integrate various techniques such as round carving, high relief, bas-relief, openwork, and incised carving. Using floral and fruit motifs, they are decorated in continuous vine patterns. Double-sided iron openwork railings are embedded within the stone railings, creating a striking contrast between the pale gray tones of the stone and the dark iron railings, making the decorative effect highly prominent.

Other stone carving decorations, such as architraves, shelf supports, brackets, dadoes, eave railings, and step aprons, all exhibit strong local characteristics. There is also a pair of stone lions (with missing bases) in front of the main gate. The stonemasons used smooth and concise lines to carve lively, serene, and welcoming beasts—representative of the stone lion style in the Guangdong region.

Mainly decorating under the wall eaves, door lintels, gable ends, and eave walls, some also serve as window decorations. Chen Clan Ancestral Hall

Guangdong brick carving differs from that of the north or Jiangnan region in both materials and techniques. Before carving, artisans select each brick individually. Then, based on the layering of the overall design, the bluestone bricks are arranged by layer, with the corresponding patterns carved out sequentially before being inlaid into the wall to form multi-layered images. The carving techniques often combine round carving, high relief, bas-relief, and openwork, with particularly outstanding deep-carving techniques. The lines are neat yet fluid, as fine as silk, hence also called “thread-suspended brick carving.”

On the polished bluestone eave walls of the east and west halls in the first section of the Chen Clan Academy, there are six large-scale brick carvings, among the largest of their kind in the Guangdong region.

Shiwan pottery ridge ornaments. During the Qing Dynasty, in ancestral halls, temples, or wealthy residences in Nanhai, Panyu, Shunde, Hong Kong, and Macau, the main ridges were often adorned with pottery ridge ornaments fired in Shiwan. Early productions mostly featured floral relief patterns, but as Shiwan pottery developed, these gradually transitioned to figure-based ridge ornaments depicting historical stories and folk legends. This unique pottery ridge culture of Shiwan was later brought by Cantonese people to Guangxi, Malaysia, Singapore, and other places, spreading their traditional culture abroad—a natural expression of homesickness.

Lime Sculpture

Traditional dwellings in old Guangdong often used lime to create simple scroll patterns on both sides of the gables, referred to as “grass tails.” In wealthier residences or ancestral halls and temples, the use of lime sculpture expanded according to the scale of the buildings. As a primary decorative craft in Guangdong’s folk architecture, lime sculpture allowed artisans to fully utilize their skills based on the theme and space, such as shaping landscapes and waterscapes through the walls or forming animals and flowers…

…into three-dimensional reliefs protruding 20 to 60 centimeters from the wall surface, creating highly prominent effects. The forms are vividly lifelike. Bold reds and greens are favored for rich, colorful displays full of folk art character.

The lime sculptures of the Chen Clan Academy are mainly used on the base of the roof ridges, the vertical ridges of the gables, the roof of corridor gates, the roofs of wing rooms and courtyards, and the ridges of the east and west study rooms—totaling over 1,800 meters in length. The themes are similar to those of pottery sculptures, mainly featuring figures, flowers and birds, pavilions, towers, landscapes, and other scenes, all rich in Lingnan characteristics.

The pottery sculptures of the Chen Clan Academy are vibrant and dazzling, a feast for the eyes. The main ridges of the academy use a total of 11 Foshan pottery sculptures. The first section has five, and the Juxian Hall ridge ornaments were fired in the 17th year of Guangxu (1891) (the Juxian Hall ridge ornaments were blown down by a typhoon in 1976 and remade in 1981) and the 19th year (1893). The four ridges of the middle and rear sections were fired in the 18th year of Guangxu (1892), and the ridge of the rear hall was completed in the 16th year of Guangxu (1890). Among the 11 ridges, the Juxian Hall ridge is the largest, stretching 27 meters in length, 2.9 meters in height, and reaching a total height of 4.26 meters including the lime base. The entire ridge features 224 figures, with themes including the Eight Immortals Celebrating Longevity, Promotion and Prosperity, and the meeting of the Bearded Guest and Li Jing. The whole ridge resembles a giant stage. Other ridges mainly depict dragons, phoenixes, flowers, birds, auspicious beasts, landscapes, as well as historical stories and group portraits.

The stone railings in front of the Juxian Hall of the Chen Clan Academy are inlaid with cast iron panels, also known as Foshan Iron Paintings. The six panels on the front depict Kylin, Jade Book, and Phoenix; the sides of the steps show Twin Dragons Playing with a Pearl, along with Three Rams Bringing Prosperity and Abundance Year After Year. These iron castings are made from Foshan pig iron, forged or cast with exquisite craftsmanship and beautiful compositions.

In addition, the Chen Clan Academy also features traditional Chinese architectural decorative art forms—murals and couplets. The east and west wing rooms of the academy are painted with several murals, with main themes including the Tengwang Pavilion and Night Banquet at Taoli, featuring figures such as Wang Bo and Li Bai. The couplets in the academy mainly express praise and remembrance of ancestors’ merits, as well as the ideals and aspirations of promoting the literary legacy of the forebears. The couplets are mostly written in regular script, forming their own unique style.

Address: No. 34, Enlong Lane, Zhongshan 7th Road, Liwan District, Guangzhou

Type: Historical Site · Museum · Historic Building · Ancestral Hall

Rating: AAAA

Recommended Visit Duration: 0.5–2 hours

Phone: 020-81814559; 020-81814371

Official Website: http://www.gzchenjiaci.com/

Opening Hours:

8:30-17:30

Transportation

1. Take Metro Line 1 and get off at Chen Clan Ancestral Hall Station.

2. Take bus routes 85, 88, 104, 107, 109, 114, 128, 193, 204, 233, 250, 260, 268, 286 to Chen Clan Ancestral Hall Station; or take bus routes 15, 52, 55, 105, 133, 196, 207, 232, 223, 549, 555 to Liwan Road Station.

Ticket

10 RMB; free for seniors aged 70 and above; half-price with valid ID for students and retirees

Address: No. 34, Enlong Lane, Zhongshan 7th Road

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Further Reading:

· Third Batch of Major National Historical and Cultural Sites