Shibazhai Village (Zhongshan Folk Village)

Shibazhai has a long history and simple ancient customs. It is said that the village was composed of 18 villages of different sizes in the old days, hence the ancient name Shibazhai, which has a history of more than 1,000 years. There are more than 20 well-preserved ancient buildings from the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, and many traditional folk customs with rich cultural connotations are still popular among the people.

The ancient buildings in the village are hidden in the shadows of the green trees and mountains, scattered among the ordinary rural houses with blue tiles and white walls, surrounded by streams, rice fields and bamboo forests. The brick carvings, stone carvings, plaques and couplets are old and mottled, but still exquisite. There are all kinds of old houses, most of which are well preserved and built during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties: Four Sages Temple, Zhuang's Ancestral Temple, Chu Sangong Temple, Yang's Sangong Temple, Chen's Ancestral House, Wan'an Bridge, Wenchang Pavilion, Mongolian Tomb, Marshal Pavilion, Yongxing Temple... If you approach gently, you can even smell the damp but slightly sweet smell of rotting wood in the air.

Wan'an Bridge, located at the entrance of the village, was built in the Bing year of Longwu in the Southern Ming Dynasty. It is a stone flat-beam bridge with three piers and four arches, 37 meters long, and built with rectangular granite strips. The boat-shaped pier design is very distinctive. It looks like a boat and is made of a whole piece of boulder, which is rare in China.

There is a "centipede street" in the village, named after its centipede-like shape. It was first built in the Yuan Dynasty, with a total length of more than 470 meters. The center line is connected by long bluestone slabs, and the two sides are horizontally built. The center line of the whole street is convex, and it rises and falls with the terrain. From a distance, the stone road surface looks like a crawling centipede, stretching for 1 li and running through the whole village. It is said that there are only three and a half centipede streets in the world, and Shibazhai occupies one of them, which the locals are also proud of. There are mostly residential houses from the Ming and Qing Dynasties on both sides of the street. Walking in the ancient streets and alleys inspires people to think about the past.

"Four Sages Temple" is a very famous ancient building in Shibazhai. It is a single-eaved hipped mountain style building with a width of 5 rooms and a depth of 6 rooms. It faces west and has a patio, a main hall, and left and right halls. It enshrines the four great Neo-Confucianists of the Song Dynasty, Yang Shi, Luo Congyan, Li Dong, and Zhu Xi. It has a history of 630 years and is now a municipal cultural relic protection unit.