Licuoci

Run your hand along the cold stone corridor pillars of Licuoci. Faint grooves remain where soldiers carved military slogans into the rock during the 1920s. These marks anchor a traditional Qing Dynasty ancestral shrine to the birth of a modern army.

Above the front corridor, the roof curves downward in the regional Chaoshan "inverted shell boat" design, sheltering a symmetrical, two-courtyard layout. Inside the main hall, a heavy "three purlins and five melons" Tailiang timber frame supports the ceiling. For generations, the Li family gathered beneath these wooden beams.

In December 1925, the quiet reverence of the shrine gave way to the sharp commands of the National Revolutionary Army. Following the Second Eastern Expedition, Zhou Enlai proposed establishing the first official branch of the Whampoa Military Academy within these walls. Chiang Kai-shek served as principal, and Zhou directed the political department. The 2,700-square-meter compound quickly transformed into a military nerve center. Classrooms and supply rooms filled the three-bay-wide halls. Over 700 cadets trained here across two terms, sleeping in temporary sheds erected just outside the walls.

A 2021 restoration stripped away decades of modern additions. Workers carefully reset the original red square floor tiles and repaired the five-element gables crowning the roof. Today, walking through the south-facing entrance means tracing the exact footsteps of young recruits preparing for the Northern Expedition. A bronze group sculpture in the central courtyard captures their likenesses. The building stands as a quiet observer, holding the echoes of both ancestral prayers and revolutionary drills within its wooden joints.