Huize Liu Family Ancestral Hall

On Faru Street in the Cuiping Community of Huize County, a quiet courtyard holds the history of a changing nation. Built in the early years of the Republic of China, the Huize Liu Family Ancestral Hall spans sixteen hundred square meters. Its layout follows a traditional two-entry quadrangle courtyard, leading visitors past a gate tower, side rooms, a transitional hall, and study rooms to the main hall. This central structure features a column-and-tie timber system beneath a heavy, hard mountain roof.

Inside the courtyard, decades-old trees rise straight toward the sky, their dense leaves catching the mountain breeze. These trees have witnessed a remarkable evolution of purpose. In 1908, the late Qing official and reformer Liu Shengtang used his own funds to establish the Patriotic Primary School inside the compound's Yinghui Hall. Children gathered here, their soft voices reciting modern lessons while their shoes smoothed the stone thresholds. In 1928, Liu Shengtang's second son, Liu Zhixi, transformed the family space again by founding the Donggao Farm. He used the grounds to introduce scientific agricultural techniques to local farmers, filling the air with the scent of turned earth and experimental seeds.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the property transitioned to the Huize County Bureau of Agriculture, which still maintains the complex. In November 1999, local authorities designated the hall as a county-level protected heritage site. The local scholar Liu Yaomin once wrote of a woodcutter's path winding past a quiet shrine in these hills, capturing the rustic peace that still lingers around the rough timber columns. Today, the ancestral hall stands as a quiet monument where family devotion, modern education, and agricultural science converged.