Gaosha Ancient Town 高沙古镇

About Gaosha Ancient Town

The hall was founded in 1742, the seventh year of the Qianlong reign, and restored between 1868 and 1873. It is a brick and timber complex on a rectangular plan, symmetrical about a central axis and facing west, running five courtyards deep from the gatehouse through a pavilion tower, front hall, covered corridor, central ritual hall and rear hall to the Zongsheng Pavilion, with bell and drum towers, the Duqin Hall, the Shouyue Studio and galleried wing rooms along the sides. It occupies 13,000 square metres with 4,260 square metres of building, two to three times the size of an ordinary ancestral hall, and the county describes it as one of the largest surviving ancestral-hall buildings in Hunan and in the country. From 2000 it was comprehensively repaired and opened as the Gaosha Museum of Literature and History.

The hall belongs to the Zeng lineage, which claims descent from Zengzi, the disciple of Confucius. Its Zongsheng Pavilion is three storeys and five bays, 22 metres wide, 11 metres deep and 17.56 metres high, holding a statue of Zengzi under a gilt plaque inscribed by the Yongzheng emperor. It also keeps a stele bearing a portrait of Zengzi, copied in 1771 from the Zongsheng Temple at Jiaxiang in Shandong by a sixtieth-generation descendant, buried in a vegetable plot in 1952 and dug up undamaged in 1998. In 1938 units of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth intakes of the Second Branch of the Whampoa Military Academy and the wartime Third Rear Hospital occupied the hall for seven years, leaving a war memorial stele, a parade ground and flagpole stones. Dongkou County as a whole is designated a Chinese capital of ancestral hall culture and a Chinese couplet culture county.

What to look for

• The Zongsheng Pavilion, three storeys and 17.56 metres high, with its statue of Zengzi and the Yongzheng emperor's gilt plaque
• The stele bearing the portrait of Zengzi, copied from Shandong in 1771, buried in 1952 and recovered in 1998
• The five-courtyard plan of the hall, from the gatehouse through the ritual hall to the rear hall
• The nearly thirty carved stone couplets and salvaged stone gateways brought here from other ruined halls around Gaosha
• The relics of the Whampoa Military Academy's wartime occupation, including the war memorial stele, parade ground and flagpole stones

Location & getting there

Getting to Gaosha Ancient Town

Identify the main visitor approach and any separately managed houses, museums or performances. Ask before entering residential spaces or photographing residents.

• Search for 高沙古镇 with 邵阳市 and 洞口县.