In 1925, Chen Heting, a scholar and builder of China's first private railway, funded a grand ancestral hall in Zhengying Village. He envisioned a monument to his family's journey from central China to the southern borderlands of Yunnan.

Visitors enter through a six-meter-tall brick and stone gate, flanked by a pair of stone lions. Beyond this threshold lies a quiet courtyard. A two-meter-deep lotus pond cools the air, spanned by a three-arch stone bridge. Walking across, you can feel the rough, irregular ice-crackle pattern of the local stone paving underfoot. The bridge balusters are carved from cold, dark blue stone, shaped into the twelve Chinese zodiac animals.

The architecture blends classical imperial styles with regional stilt-house traditions. In the middle hall, twenty outer columns support a single-eave roof. High on a roof timber, an ink inscription survives. It records the exact day of construction in the spring of 1925, preserving the names of master carpenter Li Jiabi and mason Wang Zhaoqing. Nearby, wooden window grates are carved with patterns of butterflies embracing plum blossoms. Further inside, the main hall stands on a stone platform. Its massive support pillars rest on stone bases sculpted as lions. Six-panel doors made of fragrant toon wood open to the interior, while the upper floor features window grates carved to look like green bamboo joints.

Today, the Shiping Chen Clan Ancestral Hall is a national cultural relic. The ancestral tablets are gone. The tool marks of the builders and the quiet beauty of the gilded murals remain, offering a window into the enduring spirit of Yunnan's frontier families.