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| Folk Customs- Hakka
Village > Amazing Feats of Architecture |
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The
"machine" used for making ciba is in perfect harmony
with the ancient atmosphere of the earthen buildings.
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One of the present owners of the Zhencheng
Building is Lin Shangsheng, a man in his early fifties and the
grandson of Lin Xunzhi, the designer of the building. He and
his 28 relatives reside in the rooms in the outer circle. Seeing
that I was interested in the building, he took me to visit 97-year-old
Lin Peixiu, who had participated in the construction of the
Zhencheng Building. Despite his advanced years, Mr.Lin was in
excellent health. When I saw him, he was just coming back from
feeding pigs in the pigpen and teaching his great-grandson divination
with a badly-thumbed copy of Yi Jing (The
Book of Changes). As the old man has never had
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It
is particularly fun to watch traditional puppet shows
inside one of these earthen buildings.
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any formal education, his knowledge of the
Yi Jing came entirely from Lin Xunzhi. Lin Peixiu said that
he had constructed many earthen buildings in his life, but the
Zhencheng Building was the one he was most proud of.
He was only a teenager, he recalled,
when the building was under construction. It was a formidable
project at that time to construct such a big building in this
remote mountainous region. Many roads had to be specially built
just to transport the four stone columns from the quarry to
the main hall. Each column had to be carried by 40 able-bodied
men without the use of vehicles. The iron railings were made
in an iron casting
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The
furniture inside earthen buildings today tends to be
quite modern.
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mill in Shanghai and shipped by sea to Xiamen,
from where they were transported to a town near Fujian's southern
city of Zhangzhou. They were then carried on the shoulders or
backs of workmen over mountain after mountain. It took a full
six years and 80,000 silver dollars to construct the Zhencheng
Building.
I was lodged in a room on the second floor just next to the
main hall in the inner circle of the Zhencheng Building. The
room was simply furnished, but had an exquisitely carved wooden
bed. The Zhencheng Building is now open to tourists, and about
a dozen rooms are available for lodging. |
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