A case study on the worship space of the ancient ancestral hall of You Wenjian in Huishan area of Wuxi, China

ABSTRACT

Ancestral Hall is the social, economic, and cultural hub of lineage unity. Its symbolic meaning is the basis of all its functions and space. The ancestral halls in Huishan have existed for nearly five hundred years. This article selects the ancestral hall of You Wenjian (尤文简) in Huishan area as the subject to present the evolutionary process of the worship space by studying the existing area and relevant literature. The findings are as follows: First, the ancestral hall of You Wenjian has both sacrificial and leisure functions. Its parallel axes unify the serious worship space with landscape. Second, the current layout of the ancestral hall is formed by repeated reconstruction and expansion, which inevitably reflected the ups and downs of a family in the past century and the changing social background in China. And last, different from royal rituals, the rituals in folk were rigorous and standardized, confined in a relatively enclosed space with fixed positions and circulation for lineage members. Focusing on the spatial characteristics of the ancestral hall and worship activities, the article provides valuable information regarding the cognition and cultural conservation of local traditional halls.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Huishan district
• the ancestral hall of You Wenjian
• historical architectural changes
• rituals of sacrifice
• deduction of worship space

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ During the land reform in the 1950s and the cultural revolution in the 1960s, most of the ancestral temples were either destroyed or secularized to function as rural schools or granaries.

³ The ancestral annals have documented the relevant matters of official sacrifice. The collection is now stored in Wuxi Library.

⁴ In 1536, Emperor Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty issued an imperial edict allowing the folk to “Lian Zong Li Ci” (联宗立祠, Ancestral worship in halls), before which only road rituals were allowed.

⁵ You Mao (1127–1194), posthumous name (shi) Wenjian.

⁶ To appease the people in the Jiangnan area, a series of measures have been taken by Emperor Kangxi, who visited there six times. Emperor Qianlong also made six southern tours. Huishan area, as a land and water hub, was visited 14 times. Nanxun Shengdian and other books completely recorded the scenes of emperor Kang and Qian during their inspection here.

⁷ The maintenance of an ancestral hall required a lot of money for repairs and ritual expenses. Land for rituals was needed for providing material support.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China [No. 2020YFC1522405].