The Li Family Courtyard is a typical building that reflects the local living style. It is a unique mansion in southern Shanxi, located in Yanjing Village, Wanrong County, 38 kilometers north of Yuncheng City, Shanxi Province. The architecture has both the cultural characteristics of the North and the South, and has extremely high cultural value, artistic value and aesthetic value, which fully shows the outstanding wisdom and extraordinary creativity of the ancient working people. It is bordered by Taohua Valley in the west, Qifeng in the north and Baili in the south. It is a land of geomantic omen. Lijia Courtyard Scenic Area covers an area of nearly 654.38+10,000 mu, with a building area of 654.38+10,000 square meters. It consists of five parts: ancient building area, antique building area, new building area and service area. It is a multifunctional cultural tourist attraction integrating eating, living, traveling, entertainment, shopping and fitness.
1805, the 13th generation of Li Wenbing was born. 182 1 year, 16-year-old Li Wenbing started to run a market and sell home-made cloth. Never stop, Xia Dong, take care. When it snows and rains, I walk dozens of miles with my bag on my back. The difficulty of selling homespun stands far exceeds people's imagination. 1823, Li Wenbing got the news that northern Shaanxi is close to Ningxia, Inner Mongolia and Gansu (Jingbian, Anbian and Dingbian), and the land is barren and the climate is cold, so it is impossible to grow cotton, not to mention the local people weaving homespun with cotton yarn. Most of them are in rags, and several people share a broken quilt. There is a great demand for homespun, and the price is several times higher than that of the local area. Selling homespun is quite profitable. Li Wenbing decided to use the savings earned from the stall to buy homespun and organize the caravan to run on three sides. First cross the Yellow River via Hejin, follow the caravan to Yichuan, and then reach Jingbian via Yan 'an and Ansai. At that time, people called Li Wenbing a frontier fortress.
It is said that it will take half a month to run down without rain and snow interference. Because Li Wenbing is kind and honest in business, he runs homespun smoothly and has accumulated a lot in his hands. 1827, in order to further expand our business, we have set up some cloth shops, which are not impressive enough and have limited strength. So we took Li and two younger brothers out and started to open a Zhuang shop in the trilateral area. We changed the local decentralized acquisition channels, and bought homespun in batches in Yuzhou, Henan and Zaoyang, Hubei, and also bought tea, medicinal materials and groceries for sale in the trilateral areas. We insist on two-way long-distance trafficking all the year round, and our business is getting dry.
After 1830, the Li family had a developed career and a large population. The boss, Li Wenbing, separated the business from his younger brother, Li He, gave the two stores that were easy to do to his younger brother, left the difficult business to himself, and assumed some debts himself. Li Wenbing was busy with housework and paying off debts, and business has been sluggish since then. Li and his two brothers are like a duck to water. They began to set up a business firm in Yanjing Village, which respected faith and valued righteousness, and changed from a vendor to a businessman, with faith, righteousness, honesty, courtesy, modesty and harmony as its business philosophy. Because benevolence and righteousness are the first, proper employment, genuine goods, and childlike innocence, it has won wide acclaim from the society. Later, Jingxin Post Branch was established near the Laoye Temple in Jiezhou.
From 65438 to 0852, the semicolon of respecting faith and emphasizing righteousness gradually developed to Xi 'an, Pingliang and Lanzhou. From 1862 to Xining and Yinchuan, there are shops along the way. It can be said that you can walk 60 miles a day by carriage, and you don't have to eat other people's meals or stay in other people's shops along the way. Business items include salt, pickles, groceries, leather goods, silks and satins, Beijing goods, medicinal materials, cloth, tea, wine, cakes, ticket numbers, etc.
1865 or so, Jingxinyi's firm pays dividends every three years, and shareholders pay dividends according to one share, and each develops its own firm. Li's business mainly developed to Jiezhou, An, Pingliang, Lanzhou, Yinchuan and Xining, and then to Shanghai, Tianjin and Han. Tianjin has Jingsheng Yong Commercial Bank, and Wuhan and Shanghai have perennial villages. There is a Jingyitai firm in Yinchuan, which later developed into the first of the eight largest firms in Ningxia, with assets of more than 600,000 yuan (silver).
From 1862 to 1937, it was the heyday of the Li family business. In addition to the general Yanjing Village, Jingxinyi's businesses have Jingxinyi semicolons and perennial villages in Jiezhou, Yuncheng, Tongguan, Weinan, Xi 'an, Pingliang, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Hankou, Hunan, Jiangsu, Tianjin and Shanghai. Total assets amount to several million yuan (silver dollars). In addition, Li He not only invests and does business in the general number, but also owns his own business name. Li founded Jingyi and Changshou East in Yanjing Village (mainly engaged in Sichuan and Guangdong medicines and groceries). Gongshengming Changheng Cave and Changfeng Cave mainly bought cotton, Jiangzhou Qianzhuang mainly exchanged money, and Hengji drugstore and grain store in Xiangfen were also famous at that time. The business of the Li family is getting bigger and bigger, and anti-theft has become a science. Li Gan's generation persevered and went to Li Daoxing in the15th generation, and also went to the UK to study textiles, which not only introduced the unique textile technology in the UK. Brought back an English lady. He also built a yard specially for his English wife. His yards are all newly built in imitation of European style. Including the gate.
?
The Li family courtyard is full of beautiful and lifelike brick carvings, stone carvings and wood carvings. These things were carved by craftsmen hired by Li Daoxing. These craftsmen are not particularly skilled, and some may be first-time craftsmen. Because the craftsmen selected by Li Daoxing are all poor people in Fiona Fang, the main purpose of hiring them is to make these poor people have enough money to eat. Rich people or people with jobs (these people with jobs may be poor, but at least they can fill their stomachs) will not be employed by the Li family. Later, those craftsmen learned that Li Daoxing was paying them, so they hired them. So they were very grateful and carved the statue beautifully and realistically.
Then we visited the wall of virtue. Wande Wall is the core of the Li Family Courtyard (although it is only a wall, not in the center of the Li Family Courtyard, it is the most famous scenery of the Li Family Courtyard). There is a "hundred" in the name of all virtue walls, which may make others mistakenly think that it is a hundred kinds of good deeds carved on the wall. Actually, it's not. There are more good words on it. * * * has 365 good words. And there are 365 days every year (average year). The wall of virtue means that you should do good deeds every day.
There are many interesting places in the Li Family Courtyard, such as security doors. There are three locks on the security door, even if there is a master key, only the first lock can be pried open, because the keyhole of the second lock and the third lock may not be found. There is a delicate plum blossom on the wooden door, which is a rotatable cipher iron core. The keyhole of the second lock will not appear until the password is changed correctly. After the second lock is opened, the keyhole of the third lock will appear. When the Japanese invaded China, they couldn't open it. It was an hour before they poked a small hole in the door and never went in again.
There is also a saying in the exhibition hall of the Li Family Courtyard, "Good is big or small, good is not much, good is endless, good does not wait, good does not repay (as written on the wall)." It means that we can't be unwilling to help others pick up erasers just because it's a small favor; Do a few good things and you won't feel tired, because there is no end to doing good things; Old people who honor their parents should start from now, and don't wait for the opportunity to pass; Helping others should be a pleasure, not to get paid.
Next to the exhibition hall is the pot used by the Li family for disaster relief. The sudden severe drought has caused people to lose their crops, and many people cannot survive and are in danger of starvation. At this time, the Li family opened a warehouse to release grain and set up a disaster relief pot so that everyone could have food every day. This lasted for a year, until the next year the people got a bumper harvest. That pot has made great contributions to this.
? We should engrave kindness in our hearts, do more good deeds and help others like the Li family, so that we can be loved.