Former Residence of Liao Siguang

At former residence of Liao Siguang, memory begins at a gate, crosses an open threshing ground, and enters a small Hakka walled house built to hold a family, a lineage, and a revolution.

The residence stands in Dongfeng Village, Zhoutian, Qiuchang, Huiyang District, Huizhou, Guangdong. Known locally as the Liao House of Zhoutian, it was built in the early Qing dynasty. It faces east, with an open yard in front and a turning gate before the enclosure. Its plan is compact and ordered: three halls, two side wings, and a courtyard, forming a small Hakka walled dwelling of about 1,200 square meters.

The human story is written through careful acts of keeping. The Liao clan of Zhoutian traces its ancestry to Liao Deyuan of Xingning. The house later became known as the former residence of Liao Siguang, a celebrated woman of the Long March. In 2004, this connection brought the house recognition as a Huizhou protected cultural relic.

Step through the turning gate and the house presents three front doors. The central doorway leads into the entrance hall, where a board above carries four words meaning to honor the past and enrich the future. Beyond the middle hall, the upper hall holds ancestral tablets. On the wall appears the name Youqing Hall. These are quiet architectural gestures: wood above the head, tablets before the eyes, a courtyard drawing light into brick and timber.

On the left side of the ancestral hall is the section dedicated to Liao Siguang. Her former side wing had collapsed, and later generations rebuilt it in her memory. It opened on July 1, 2011. Ye Xuanping wrote the plaque for the residence. Inside, the kitchen and bedroom were restored to an older appearance, bringing daily life back into view: cooking smoke imagined from the stove, a bed set within repaired walls, the coolness of the courtyard underfoot.

In 2014, members of the Liao clan funded repairs to the ancestral shrine. They placed a stone lion on the entrance hall roof, a small guardian above a house already carrying centuries of names.

This residence is most powerful as a preserved threshold: between clan and country, ancestral ritual and revolutionary memory, collapsed wing and rebuilt room. Here, history does not shout. It waits in the gate, the hall, the plaque, and the repaired roof.