What is the traditional geographical layout of the Shanxi Merchants Courtyard in architecture?

The house of Shanxi merchants looks like a castle, facing the street on three sides, surrounded by closed brick walls, more than three feet high, with parapets and probes. The gate sits west to east, with a top floor, and the middle gate is the entrance of the cave. The gate is paved by a stone tunnel, surrounded by retaining walls on both sides, and the farthest ancestral hall is a temple-style structure. All branches in the hospital are in a "room-complete" layout, and the houses in the hospital are called "room-complete".

Local folk proverbs even say that "there is no east, no old wife, no east, no husband, only north room, no king, no minister". Although several courtyards are symmetrical, their doors must have moved to the wrong side. According to traditional geography, door-to-door is mouth-to-mouth, so stuttering and small mouth will lead to discord between father and son, discord between brothers and sisters and mutual jealousy. The famous Qiao Family Courtyard consists of six courtyards, three in the north and three in the south. The North Third Hospital is arranged counterclockwise, and the earthquake hexagrams (in the east), the Kangua (in the north) and the Gangua (in the northwest) are arranged counterclockwise from the east to the northwest. The structure of the South Third Hospital is composed of eight diagrams, namely Kun Gua (southeast), Li Gua (south) and Kun Gua (southwest), which are constructed in turn from southeast to southwest and finally meet in Du Gua (due west). Why build six yards? The up and down direction is called "Liuhe", which means perfection. In addition, six is homophonic with "Lu" and has auspicious meaning, that is, "66 Dashun".

In addition, the Sixth Academy also means "six hexagrams", which is a combination of gossip and occupies the whole geography.

The courtyards built in Pingchuan are arranged on both sides with the east-west axis. According to the traditional geographical theory of "East Qinglong, West Baihu, it is better to make Qinglong three points taller than Baihu", the Ming-style buildings on the gate are generally very tall, and the inner courtyard is gradually raised from west to east.

In order to conform to the traditional geographical principle of high in the north and low in the south, the tallest buildings in its courtyard are built at the northern end. Cao's compound is built on the mountain. To this end, three sacrificial pavilions symbolizing pigs, cows and sheep were built on the three main buildings at the northern end, so as to shock Nanshan and cooperate with the rivers in the East to become a treasure house of "happiness as the East China Sea and longevity longer than Nanshan". Jingshan is the Feng Shui Mountain of the Forbidden City, with five pavilions built on it, but the Cao family of Shanxi merchants will also build three pavilions, which is magnificent.