Jingzhou Chuanzhu Palace

In 1745, Sichuan merchants in Jingzhou pooled their wealth to build the Shuying Guild Hall, enshrining the Three Kingdoms ruler Liu Bei. They built it on Zhuqi Street, where the smell of Yangtze River silt hung heavy in the air. When river floods swept the original structure away, the merchants rebuilt it inland near the Jingjiang Dyke. Wars eventually claimed the main halls, leaving only the opera tower standing as a solitary sentinel of their displaced homeland.

By 1984, modern bulldozers arrived on Jiefang Road to clear the site. Demolition workers had already dismantled half the structure when a local journalist, Zhang Minggui, stopped his bicycle. Hearing the splintering of old beams, he shouted for the workers to stop. The click of his camera shutter captured the endangered monument, and his subsequent newspaper appeal saved the remaining structure. Between 1986 and 1987, the city relocated the tower to the northern bank of Jiangjin Lake.

Visitors can touch the rough grain of centuries-old wood carvings on the stage's architraves, where three soaring dragons and scenes from the Three Kingdoms remain preserved. Above the stage, an octagonal, double-layered caisson ceiling draws the eye upward to coiling dragons, auspicious clouds, and sixteen panels carved with bats and trailing grass. Actors enter through doorways marked by stone plaques reading "Xiang Zhong E Ling" and "Jin Can Jing Jiang."

Now managed by the Jingzhou Local Opera Heritage Center, the stage remains active. The sharp crack of wooden clappers and the echo of high-pitched Hanju and Chuju opera strings still bounce off the ancient beams, keeping the merchants' legacy alive over the water.