Historical evolution of oyster shell wall

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, there were twenty or thirty oyster walls in a village, and there were fifty or sixty more, which was unique. There are many existing oyster walls in Buyong, Shajing and Houting villages, among which Buyong Jiang's ancestral hall is the most famous, and there are more than ten ancient oyster houses in the old village behind the ancestral hall. Here you can appreciate the unique architectural charm of the oyster wall in Shajing Ancient Oyster House. Liu Tangyao's "Records of the Ridge Table" said: "Lu Ting, Lu Xun returned to Guangzhou and suffered a crushing defeat. The remaining party ran into the island to live in the wild, but ate oysters and the shell was the wall." In the notes of scholars and officials who have been to Lingnan in the Ming Dynasty, characters with oyster shells as walls are also common. Qu Dajun, a great scholar in the early Qing Dynasty, made a detailed textual research on oysters, saying that oysters were made of salt water, and their shells were built into walls, reaching five or six feet. He saw that the houses where people lived were all made of oyster shells, and he looked at them at once.

Taking oyster shell as the wall is a common architectural technique in Ming Dynasty. At that time, most of the oyster shell walls appeared in the ancestral halls that everyone admired, or in the homes of rich people. The reason why it is especially favored by large families is that the shell wall of oysters is uneven and uneven. If a thief rushes over the wall in the dark and is admitted to the hospital, he will be chopped and his hand and foot will be broken, which has anti-theft function. In addition, oyster shells were selected as building materials mostly because they were eaten by the sea at that time. Eating oysters and raising oysters are very common, and oyster shells are rich in materials, so it is convenient enough to take local materials.