Banshan Pavilion

　　    Banshan Pavilion, the library building of Tongcheng Middle School founded by Wu Rulun, a prominent late-Tongcheng School writer and late Qing educator, is situated on the campus of Tongcheng Middle School. Constructed in the 29th year of the Guangxu reign during the Qing Dynasty (1903), its design involved Japanese teacher Hayakawa Tōmei, who once taught at the school. Contemporary experts in ancient architecture, such as Shan Qiuyuan, Luo Zhewen, and Zheng Xiaoxie, highly praised its architectural form and artistic design, hailing it as “frozen music.”

　　    Wu Rulun, courtesy name Zhipu (also written as Zhi Fu), was a native of Tongcheng, Anhui Province, during the Qing Dynasty. A literary figure and educator of the late Qing period, he was also a writer of the later Tongcheng School. He achieved the jinshi degree in the fourth year of the Tongzhi reign, and successively served as an aide to Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, as well as prefect of Shenzhou and Jizhou. He long presided over the Lianchi Academy, and in his later years was appointed as the chief instructor of the Imperial University of Peking. He also founded the prestigious Tongcheng Middle School. In his lifetime, Wu published works such as Shenzhou Fengtu Ji (Records of Shenzhou Local Customs) and Dongyou Conglu (Records of Travels to the East). A year after his death, his son Wu Sheng compiled and published the complete works of Wu Rulun, Tongcheng Wu Xiansheng Quanshu, which includes six types of writings such as collected essays, poetry, letters, and commentaries on classics. There are also many unpublished or uncompiled manuscripts, some of which were later published, including Tongcheng Wu Xiansheng Riji (Diary of Wu Rulun), Chidu Xu Bian (Continuation of Letters), Zhi Fu Shi Ji (Poetry Collection of Zhi Fu), and various annotated ancient texts.

　　    Banshan Pavilion is a two-story brick-and-wood structure consisting of two parts: a pavilion and a tower. It gets its name because the pavilion is built against the west wall of the tower, leaving only the east wall of the tower visible. The “pavilion” faces west and has two stories, with a width of three bays and a depth of one bay, featuring a hip-and-gable roof imitation. It is 8.9 meters wide, 3.4 meters long, and 8.4 meters high. The ground floor is protected by brick walls, with a door on the north and south sides each. Entering from the north door, a staircase leads to the second floor. The upper level is a wooden post-and-lintel structure, open on the south, west, and north sides, with railings and hanging latticework under the eaves. The roof is covered with gray-blue tiles, with small corner brackets at the roof hips, and a horizontal plaque inscribed with Wu Rulun’s calligraphy reading “Strive to Become Pillars of the Nation” in running regular script. There is also a couplet in running script that reads: “A century hence, talent will flourish, nurtured here; the essence of Eastern and Western scholarship refined into character,” with gold-plated raised characters that shine brilliantly.

　　    To the east of the pavilion is the “tower,” oriented north-south, with a width of five bays and a depth of one bay, measuring 18.7 meters wide, 6.3 meters long, and two stories high, with a gabled roof on the west side and a small-tile covering. The gable walls on the east and west extend to the top, with corridors on all sides—front, back, upper, and lower—and four pillars reaching the eaves on both sides, also adorned with hanging latticework. The lower floor features eight double-panel windows along the corridor walls, making the space bright and spacious. The upper floor has wooden plank flooring, paneled windows, handrails, carved woodwork, and is uniformly painted red. There are two arched doorways connecting the pavilion and the tower.

　　    Banshan Pavilion is elegant and classic in style, earning the praise of being a piece of “frozen music.” To the northwest of the pavilion are a green cypress and a wisteria planted by Wu Rulun, the founder of Tongcheng Middle School, symbolizing a lesson for students: to learn from the evergreen and upward-reaching cypress, and not the sprawling, dependent wisteria. Stone pillar inscriptions, gathering famous lines from Six Dynasties literati and written by late Qing calligrapher Fang Shoudun, express the earnest hopes of these earlier scholars for future students. In 1989, the People's Government of Anhui Province designated it as a provincial-level key cultural relics protection unit.