Thousand Column Houses

The Thousand Pillars House is one of the scenic spots in the Dongbai Lake Scenic Spot in Zhuji City. It was built by Si Yuanru in the reign of Emperor Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty (1798) and is now inhabited by descendants of the Si surname. It is named after the thousand columns in the house. The Thousand Column House is distributed with 5 vertical axes and 3 horizontal axes, which is a courtyard-style group layout. It covers a total area of 6,850 square meters. It is a building built on a mountain facing south and north. It is 108.5 meters wide from east to west and 63.1 meters deep from north to south. The ratio of length to width is the golden section. The house has 8 courtyards, 10 large patios, 36 small patios, 121 buildings, 1322 pillars, and the pillars are miscellaneous woods. There are four gates on the east and west sides with the main gate as the axis, with a total of five longitudinal entrances. The forehead of the door is made of bluestone and engraved with the four characters "Yusiweisheng", which is a nine-fold seal, which is a copy of Mi Fu, a calligrapher in the Song Dynasty. The forehead of the door is decorated with brick figures, landscapes, dragons and phoenixes and other patterns. Passing the gate building is the main hall, with five lift-type structures. On both sides of the main hall, there are "Conggui Hall", "Shuanghuai Hall", "Fu Shou Hall" and "Ren Shou Hall", all of which are engraved with the name of the regular script hall with bluestone and inlaid on the wall. There is a brick carving of "Hundred Horses" on the wall in the main hall. There are 53 white horses, which are made of 21 blue bricks with a length of 0.34 meters and a width of 0.30 meters. The total length is 7.04 meters. The closed door of the central hall can only be opened under one circumstance, that is, it is opened when the clansman dies. The residents of the Thousand Pillars House still maintain this custom. They cannot easily open the main door, and can only enter and exit through the side door.