Longdao Ancient Village, Zhongshan, Guangxi

Longdao Village was built in the Yuan Dynasty. The existing ancient buildings were mainly built in the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. There are 6 watchtowers, 7 gate towers, 1 academy, 1 ancestral temple, 1 village master, and more than 50 ancient dwellings. The most distinctive feature of the ancient dwellings in the village is that the gate of each old house is carved with exquisite stone couplets. There are more than 200 permanent stone couplets in the village, and none of them are repeated. Most of the ancient dwellings in Longdao Village were built on slopes, separated by alleys. The whole ancient village has many watchtowers, gate towers, and complex alleys. It is a building complex divided by clans. The whole village belongs to the same clan, and then different families are separated by alleys to form large branches. Each large branch is composed of multiple groups of buildings, and each group of buildings has 1–3 houses, forming a small branch. The fewer the building groups, the closer the kinship. The ancient dwellings in Longdao Village pay great attention to decoration, with murals, gray sculptures, wood carvings, stone carvings, etc. The flower windows and screens are mostly carved with landscapes, flowers, birds, and figures. The walls are inscribed with poems and inscriptions, with rich and diverse content. To a certain extent, it represents the level of folk art in Lingnan in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, and also reflects the aesthetic taste of ordinary people in this period. It is a living textbook for studying the traditional folk culture, art, and architecture of Lingnan in the middle and late Qing Dynasty. It is a famous historical and cultural village in China and one of the first batch of traditional Chinese villages.