Sun’s Ancestral Hall in Lingdong Village, Wenxi County, Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province

I saw a Sun family ancestral hall in Lingdong Village, Wenxi County. The ancestral hall was founded on the tenth day of March in the thirty-eighth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1610), and rebuilt on the twenty-second day of August in the fifth year of Qianlong's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1740). Although it has a history of hundreds of years, the ancestral hall is still well preserved and the solidity of its architectural structure is impressive.

This Sun family ancestral hall is located in the center of Lingdong Village and is now the seat of the village committee. Its main door faces south and faces north, with three bays. A wooden plaque hangs directly above the middle, with the words "Sun's Ancestral Hall" engraved in running script. There are door openings on both sides of the door. The lintel is made of brick and is inscribed with Miao seal script. The right side is written "Mingjie" and the left side is written "Jingjia". Entering the gate, there is a hanging flower door on the front. There is a wooden plaque above it with the inscription "Shao Wen Yi De" in running script. It was inscribed by Sun Chang, the twelfth generation of Sun Men Jinshi and the twelfth generation, in the late spring of Bingzi (1696). After passing through the hanging flower gate, there is a courtyard. There is a three-bay main hall directly in front, facing south and facing north. There are two stone pillars under the eaves. There is a couplet carved in stone on the pillars, and the handwriting is clearly visible. There is a wooden plaque hanging above the center of the hall, with the running script "Zhao Jie Yan Yi" engraved on it. In the recess of the wall below, there is an ancestral stele. On the right wall of the stele is the "Zhaomu Picture of Wenxi Sun Family Lineage" engraved in June of the second year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1797), and on the left gable wall is the "Thirty Articles of Family Law". According to villagers, in the early 1960s, in order to activate rural cultural life, the ancestral hall was converted into a farmers' club, and all the stone carvings on the walls of the ancestral hall were smoothed and covered with mud. A few years ago, the tribesmen scraped off the mud, but the stone carvings are still well preserved.

The Sun family is a famous family in the history of Wenxi. Its founder, Sun Liangfu, moved to Linfen from Linfen in the early Yuan Dynasty, and had 29 generations in the early Republic of China. In the Qing Dynasty, the family had 56 scholars in the county, 1 Jinshi, 4 Juren, and 2 deputy tributes. Sun's ancestral hall has gone through wind and rain, but is still intact, with exquisite wood carvings, brick carvings, and stone carvings, which are full of local characteristics. It is a physical material for studying the local architectural art of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.