Cangwu East Guangdong guild hall

Cangwu East Guangdong guild hall

Cangwu East Guangdong guild hall is the earliest guild hall built in Guangxi. It is located in beizhongyi street, Longwei Town, Cangwu county (formerly known as Rongwei, one of the four ancient towns in Guangxi). It is of great value for the study of politics, history, economy, customs, ancient culture and art, and architectural art at that time.

Introduction to guild hall

In the early Qing Dynasty, businessmen from Gaozhou, Luoding, Xinyi, Heshan, Leizhou, Nanhai, Foshan, Guangzhou and other places of Guangdong gathered in Rongwei to do business. According to the records of rebuilding the eastern Guangdong guild hall stele in the 53rd year of Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty, after the department stores and sundries operated by the eastern Guangdong people entered Guangxi, Longwei was the distribution center, and most of the eastern Guangdong businessmen also settled here, so there was Guangdong in a very early time The guanfuzi temple built by the easterners is for the worship of businessmen in eastern Guangdong. In the 53rd year of Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty (1714), Guangdong merchants transformed the original ancestral hall of guanfuzi into a guild hall, attracting more Guangdong merchants to settle in Rongwei to do business. After the renovation and expansion in the 53rd year of Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty (1788), there were more than 1600 people who built the hall. Among them, there were 400 Guangdong businessmen who marked the place of business on the epitaph of the reconstructed East Guangdong guild hall, and nearly 300 Guangdong businessmen who had already settled in Guangxi. They were distributed in all the counties of Guangxi except sichengfu.

structure

The total area of the guild hall is about 288 square meters, and the overall layout is quadrangle. The building is composed of front, middle and back, which is a back hall structure. There are also side doors, wing rooms, accounting rooms, watchtowers and other ancillary buildings. The existing buildings are only the middle hall (wusheng hall, dedicated to Guan Yu) and the back hall (Tianfei hall, dedicated to Tian Hou). The front hall and accounting room as the stage no longer exist. The middle is supported by four big wooden columns and two stone columns. The pillars are matched with iron wood. The beams are carved and painted. The eaves, beams and walls are decorated with relief patterns. In art, the knives and brushes are meticulous and skillful. The glass tiles, cornices and Phoenix horns are simple and gorgeous. On the side wall of the back hall of the guild hall is inlaid with a piece of stele for rebuilding the East Guangdong guild hall and two pieces of stele for rebuilding the East Guangdong guild hall. In addition, the stele for creating Batou in the Jiashen year of the East Guangdong guild hall, the stele for rebuilding Qinglin Temple and the stele for rebuilding Jiaqing guild hall are also preserved in the guild hall, recording the communication between Guangdong and Guangdong at that time, relevant industries and business names. Through the lines of the inscription, we can see the past glory of this historical town.

Address: Cangwu County, Wuzhou, Guangxi

Longitude: 111.2436523375

Latitude: 23.421983718872