Danfeng Boatmen's Guild Hall 丹凤船帮会馆

About Danfeng Boatmen's Guild Hall

The guild hall was first built in 1815, the twentieth year of the Jiaqing reign. The platform explains how it was paid for: Longju Fort, where it stands, was a transport junction described as linking Qin and Jin to the north and Wu and Chu to the south, and before the Longhai railway opened, goods came up the Yangtze and the Han River to Longju and were carried on from there by pack animal — which is why the place had a reputation as a land-and-water wharf. The boat guild depended on Dan River shipping and had grown large but had no hall of its own, so more than 500 boatmen and porters decided to raise the money, setting aside three copper coins from the payment on every consignment until they had enough.

The hall keeps a theatre building and a main hall facing each other north and south. The theatre is the principal structure: the platform describes it as combining the imposing height of northern building with the ornament and fine detail of southern building. It faces south, is of brick and timber, measures 36 metres long by 11 metres deep with an 8-metre stage opening, and is carved with landscapes, pavilions, carts and processions, birds, animals, fish and insects, flowers and trees, and figures of scholar, farmer, artisan and merchant.

The building carries two official listings. The Shaanxi provincial government listed it in the third batch of provincial protected cultural-relic sites in April 1992, and the provincial cultural relics bureau listed it in December 2020 in the first batch of Shaanxi's immovable revolutionary relics, under the name 'the Red 25th Army training-ground site (Boat Guild Hall)'. In May 1935 the Red 25th Army trained its troops at Longju Fort on the instructions of the CPC's Hubei-Henan-Shaanxi provincial committee, and that committee held a mass meeting in the guild hall to publicise the army's aims and its call to resist Japan. A separate report on the provincial public-institution registration site records that the county government agreed in June 2023 to establish a Shaanxi provincial Taiwan-exchange base at the guild hall, and that it was inaugurated there on 5 January 2024. No cited source states the building's present opening arrangements or which parts are accessible.

What to look for

• The theatre building, which the provincial platform describes as the hall's principal structure, 36 metres long and 11 metres deep with an 8-metre stage opening
• The carvings on the theatre — landscapes, pavilions, carts and processions, birds and animals, flowers and trees, and figures of scholar, farmer, artisan and merchant
• The main hall, which faces the theatre across the courtyard
• The site's Red 25th Army associations, marked by its official listing as the Red 25th Army training-ground site

Location & getting there

Getting to Danfeng Boatmen's Guild Hall

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 丹凤船帮会馆 with 商洛市 and 丹凤县.