Nanping, September 9 (Ye Guobao, Zhang Lijun, Wei Yongqing) Fushan Hall, Zhengwei Village, Dikou Town, Jianou City, Nanping, Fujian Province, which has long been believed to have been built in the Ming Dynasty, has now been confirmed to be the earliest known wooden building of the Yuan Dynasty in Fujian Province.

Wang Wenqian, director of Nanping Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, said on the 25th that this discovery has great historical value and social significance, and is a prominent example of the ancient existence of cultural heritage in northern Fujian.

The picture shows the main hall of Fushan Hall in Zhengwei Village. Photo by Wei Yongqing

Since Zhengwei Village was included in the third list of traditional villages in China in 2014, cultural relics experts and volunteers have often visited and vaguely found ink inscriptions on many stains in Fushan Hall.

In particular, on one of the main beams at the highest part of the hall, it is displayed that "Weizhi Dayuan Yuan Fucheng on the ninth day of the eighth month of the first year of Wei Zhi ... The words "Zhu" prove that the main hall was rebuilt on August 1308, 8, which is 25 years old.

The picture shows an infrared photo of Liang Moshu, the master of Fushan Hall. Photo by Ying Kangjia

Fushan Hall is a group of local temple buildings, consisting of the theater, patio, main hall distributed in the central axis, as well as side halls, bell towers, drum towers, etc. on both sides, with a total width of 21 meters, a depth of 34 meters, and an area of 726 square meters.

Since the construction of the building, there have been no records of fires and water damage.

The picture shows the theater tower opposite the main hall of Fushan Hall and rebuilt during the reign of the Qing Tongzhi. Photo by Fang Ming

Since ancient times, Fushan Hall has played the leading role in theatrical performances on the stage, and the age of the construction of the hall is generally not deeply studied by outsiders. Although some scholars intuitively proposed that the structural style of the hall has the characteristics of earlier Ming Dynasty architecture, because its upper beam frame has been obliterated by time, the whole body is dark, and the inscription cannot be found, and the dating cannot be confirmed.

According to the data, the earliest known wooden building of the Yuan Dynasty in the southeast region was Yanfu Temple in Wuyi County, Zhejiang Province, built in the fourth year of Yuan Yanyou (1317), but it was 9 years later than the main hall of Fushan Hall.

Some experts speculate that the Yuan Dynasty lasted less than 100 years, and from the perspective of the main beam of Fushan Hall, to complete the hall and other buildings of this scale, the construction era may be moved forward to the Southern Song Dynasty.

Zhengwei Village has more than 30 complete and tangible ancient residential courtyards, 5 large and small ancestral halls, 4 shrines and 2 ancient corridor bridges, which is a rare village in Jianou City where a large number of traditional buildings are concentrated and continuously distributed, the overall style is coordinated and unified, and even the architectural details are well preserved.

The picture shows an aerial view of the main hall and its ancillary buildings. Photo by Zheng Jinlan

Fushan Hall is now a general immovable cultural relic. Rao Shuwen, director of the Jianou Cultural Protection Center, said that according to the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics and the relevant notification requirements of the Fujian Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, Fushan Tang will be announced as a county-level and declared as a higher-level cultural protection unit according to the procedure. (End)