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[Back to Project Narrative] [Past and Present, Future Prospects]
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 Historical building is like a time machine, it takes us through time
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- “Xie ancestral shrine” in Hemei was a collective memory for the generation of our teachers and Hemei residents. Children played around its neighborhood or students passed by on their way to school, Hemei residents lived with “Xie ancestral shrine”；Later, this historical house was demolished. A historical memory erased from our streets. Other than our regret, we also wonder about other historical houses facing the same fate. “Xie ancestral shrine” is not the first, and won’t be the last.
- “Preserving historical building” is a difficult task. Besides monitoring and restoration by government, we as students hope to contribute a little effort to this huge project in our own way. Via this cyber fair, we work hard to find these disappearing historical houses in Hemei, collecting information and making webpage in hope of reminding Hemei residents of these valuable historical memories around us.
- In this mission, our search team discovered many historical houses by looking into books like township records and interviewing local elders. Most of these surviving houses are located in the suburbs of cities or towns, crossing paths with farmlands and factories. By visiting on location, we not only rediscover how people in early days lived, but also find lots of unexpected knowledge and surprises. – we understand the origin and migration paths of the residents from hall names and genealogy books. For example: There is a “Xihe Yanpai” on the inscribed board of “Haoxiu Village Lin Family House,” it points out where in China Lin family is originated from；From the scale of architecture, we can understand the concept of respecting for seniority and ancestor in Chinese culture. For instance in a traditional Sanheyuan, ancestral tablet is in the main building, the heights of hulong on two wings are not the same；We can discover life blessings, expectations from decorations and paintings in the building. For example, “Under Zijing Branches” and “Sweet Smells of Orchid and Osmanthus “ are inscribed on the rounded flowerbed in the front yard of “Ruan ancestral shrine.” They means brothers in harmony, good virtues will pass down forever.
- As stated above, preserving Hemei’s historical houses not only saves life memories of our local residents, but also displays functions of historical and cultural heritage. Preserving these cultural heritage is necessary as we can see；However, due to different needs in life, we all have different ideas on land utilization, for commercial uses or apartments, etc. we forget that many things cannot be measured only by “practical or not.”
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The future of historical house~ Rebuild VS Renovate~
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- Seeing mottled inscriptions on “Xiuyi Hall” of “Ruan ancestral shrine” and window grilles peeling off on ”Wu Family Western Style House,” we all understand there are only two solutions-either demolition or preservation. As a result, the goal of our “Hemei Historical House Search Team” in this project is to let these historical memories reappear in front of Hemei people’s eyes. They can realize preserving historical house is not the responsibility of government only, but every one of us, too.
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