When we talk about the Jianshui ancient city, it is quite natural for us to think of the magnificent Confucius’ temple of the Yuan Dynasty, as well as the Sun-rising Tower of the Ming Dynasty which resembles the forces of the Yueyang tower and the Huanghe tower. This week a good destination for friends when you learn Chinese in Yunnan is the Jianshui ancient city.
It is unique when you are in Mandarin language courses in China that the Zhu family’s garden of the Qing Dynasty is with deep courtyard, the cave of swallows which provides shelters for thousands upon thousands of swallows. In addition, it is brilliant enough to attract the attention of all the friends considering about “why learn Chinese in Yunnan” due to its outstanding flavor and quality. One place that can’t be omitted when you travel to the Jianshui ancient city is the Tuanshan historically and culturally famous village, which had been enlisted into the world memorial building heritage protection list as the “well preserved aboriginal village with 19th century style and features”.
The Tuanshan village can be seen when you have found a place to learn Chinese in Yunnan, that it is located in the Xizhuang which is 12 kilometers west to the Jianshui ancient city with mountains back at the village, and a river running through the front of the village. And when you take a distant look at it, it is not hard to be discovered by people in Chinese language school that the village gate is high and are surrounded by meandering walls, the resident houses within are with pink walls and black tiles, which join closely together like the teeth of a comb or the scales of a fish, visitors would start to wonder, which family had been managed to build up such a magnificent and gorgeous complex of ancient architecture buildings.
Well, in the Tuanshan village, the family clan surnamed Zhang was the local super family, among the 240 households, 178 households were the descendants of Zhang’s family. The foreign friends waiting to attend Mandarin learning courses must be interested about the Zhang’s genealogy. Well, it is said that the ancestor Zhangfu used to be a businessman in Jiangxi province, when he come to Jianshui six hundred years ago, he managed to multiply his descendants and become the greatest family here and even built ancestral temple here to pay tributes to the ancestors and to continue the family clans, people in intensive language courses in China would then be interested about the Zhang family’s education instruction.
It is necessary to be shared with people to learn Chinese in China that the Zhang family’s education instruction is “great forbearance”, they regarded the endurance to be the best principle to reach harmony, in addition, the Zhang family lays emphasis on education, and there were more than twenty provincial secretaries, civil and military officials in history.
It is worth noticing for students who intends to study Chinese that there was a great bustle of masons and carpenters started during the end of the Qing Dynasty, when the Zhang descendants were unsatisfied with the small proportions of farm land and went out to work in Gejiu as tinners, which had helped some to get rich, and they invited the artisans, calligraphers and drawers with large sums of money, the main architectural complex is largely the preservation of that period.
It should be understood by the foreign friends when they study in China that the huafang(flora-patterned decorations) and dougong(a system of brackets inserted between the top of a column and a crossbeams) of the Zhang architectural complex had reached certain artist and cultural levels, which had been under constant renovation and protections by some volunteers of the Zhang descendants.
As you walk along the blue flagstone paved lanes and enjoys the delicate and auspicious motifs on the window frames, such as the ones with three layered lotus flower petals signifies the wishes for the promotion three ranks of official posts, the panes with magpies symbolizes wishes for the happiness all the year round. Foreign friends planning to go to learn Mandarin in elsewhere China would seldom be able to have such a unique travel experience. Still, some of the Zhang family’s ancestor worshipping songs as well as ancient tunes would make tourists wonder whether they are in Lijiang ancient city or Jianshui.