How did Huizhou architecture come into being?

Although Huizhou has beautiful mountains and rivers and rich products, it lacks vast plains and fertile fields. So the population is narrow and the villages are dense. In order to survive, the local people had to leave their homes and "look for food and clothes everywhere". Many of them are very good operators, taking wood, tea, silk, rice and other local products as commodities, trafficking for a long time, then developing salt industry, and soon getting rich. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a strange phenomenon appeared in China. Rich businessmen are not important towns along the coast, but Shanxi merchants and Huizhou merchants who are geographically closed in Shanxi and Anhui. This is a historical issue worth studying. At that time, once businessmen had abundant funds, the first thing they had to do was to build large-scale houses in their hometown, and Huizhou merchants were no exception.

The most typical style of Huizhou architecture is that the high walls on the left and right (or east and west) sides are stepped, which is called "riding wall" or "wind-fire wall" by locals. Villages, streets and lanes are lined with houses, which are separated by a fence. They have two functions: first, Huizhou merchants do business outside all the year round, most of them are old, weak, women and children at home, and high walls have the function of anti-theft; Secondly, the ancient buildings in China are mostly wooden beams and columns, so fire prevention should be the first priority. In order not to make a family catch fire and neighbors suffer, the "wind-fire wall" plays an important role in blocking the fire source.

Due to the limitation of building space, Huizhou architecture is not as rich as the northern quadrangles, so buildings generally appear "stingy". From the outside to the inside, the usual pattern is: stone gate-slab wall (similar to the shadow wall of the northern quadrangle, but generally without any decoration, it only plays the role of blocking the sight of outsiders)-patio (playing the role of ventilation and lighting, some people dig pools in the patio, skillfully set up bonsai, and have other interests)-left and right wing rooms parallel to the patio-living room (the main place of family daily life, dining and visitors)

I think the most ingenious design of Huizhou architecture is to push the patio. Taking it as "well" means that it is different from "courtyard" and takes its high and narrow meanings. Both of them are "open-air", but the former is located in the center of a house, which is more ventilated because of its narrowness, forming a "stack effect". This kind of ancient house is cool in summer, and a big factor is the function of patio. For safety reasons, the windows of Huizhou architecture are small and few, so the patio has the function of lighting besides ventilation.

Another notable difference between Huizhou people's architecture and northern architecture is that they don't care much about the plane scale of architecture, don't like carelessness, and pay more attention to carving beams and painting buildings in limited architectural space to show their personal appreciation taste. Stone carvings and brick carvings on the lintels of Huizhou ancient buildings, reliefs on beams and columns, and carvings on the skirts of doors and windows are precious artistic treasures. There were many skilled craftsmen in ancient Huizhou. What's more, because "the mountain is high and the emperor is far away", the artistic elements of many ancient buildings actually escaped the ten-year catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution. Now these humble "gadgets" have become the cultural symbols of a village.