Beginning in 1846, and lasting three years, the Li family carried out extensive construction work on the basis of the original Huang Clan Ancestral Hall, imitating the scale construction of Wenshu Monastery in Chengdu, and built the Li Clan Ancestral Hall. From then on, the former imperial city of the Huang family chieftain became a feudal castle integrating the Li family's political power, military power and clan power.
The Li family ancestral hall is a brick and wood structure, covering an area of ??6,000 square meters, with a building area of ??3,800 square meters and more than 60 houses, which is large in scale. It adopts a beam frame structure that combines the lifting beam and bucket type commonly used in the Qing Dynasty, and is high, open and solemn.
The three sides behind the ancestral hall are a protective wall with a total length of 400 meters and a height of 8 meters. The inner circle of the protective wall is about 10,000 square meters of gardens. The ladder stones on the wall are raised step by step according to the mountain topography. Each ladder is a whole piece, generally weighing about a thousand kilograms, and the heaviest one weighs more than 5,000 kilograms.
The turrets at the four corners of the parapet are abrupt. There are 100 gun holes and gun holes on the Baokan railing wall and the entire parapet wall. Looking from a distance, it looks like an ancient castle standing majestically in the vast mountains, which looks particularly special. strict.
The Li family ancestral hall is a palace-style building with three halls and four compartments, a hard mountain-style tile roof, surrounded by brick walls, and towering wind and fire crevices on both sides. The three stack heads of Fenghuo Duo are richly inlaid with colorful porcelain on the tops, edges of the stacks and the walls of the ancestral hall. The shapes of flowers, birds, insects and fish are vivid and dazzling.
There are several gates and holes on the front wall of the ancestral hall, which are called Zuoshan Gate, Zhongshan Gate, Right Mountain Gate and Back Mountain Gate. The two mountain gates on the left and right lead to the wing rooms, with the inscriptions "Safety of Living" and "Peace is Blessing" on their foreheads; the Zhongshan Gate leads to the main hall. The three main halls on the central axis are arranged in an orderly manner, each covering an area of ??15 meters wide and 15 meters deep. 9 meters, 10 meters, 10 meters.
The front hall and the back hall are connected to the left and right wings respectively. The middle hall is surrounded by courtyard dams paved with regular stones. The beams and pillars of the three halls can be hugged together, and there are couplets on the pillars.
Under the left and right side walls of the central hall, there is a pool built of large stone slabs. The right side is named "Lianquan Well", with the word "forbearance" about two meters high written on the wall; the left side is named "Rang Pool" , there is a two-meter-high word "Nai" written on the wall, which shows the dominant position of Confucianism in the entire building and the family education at that time.
The plaque "Kuishan Hall" hangs high under the eaves of the back hall. The tablets on the shrine are dedicated to the ancestors of the Li family. The middle hall, also known as the "worship hall", is the central hall where the Li family preaches clan rules when worshiping their ancestors. There are woodcut clan rules and family mottos displayed around it.
In addition to the three main halls, there are 66 houses in the two wings. The left wing is equipped with a lecture hall and the houses of the patriarch and deacons; the right wing is equipped with a bank room, accounting room, and warehouse. There is a huge stone called "Fault Bridge" in the lecture hall, which is 3.81 meters long, 4.45 meters wide and 0.27 meters thick. The stone is engraved with Tai Chi wind and cloud patterns and a bat is engraved on each corner. It was used by the head of the Li family to enforce family law and hear cases. place.
Go down 72 stone steps from the east corner of the ancestral hall. There is a small well on the east side of the front of the ancestral hall. The spring water is sweet and does not dry up all year round. The well was originally outside the wall. Later, the Li family spent two years building a high wall with huge stones to surround the well. From then on, the well was enclosed in the courtyard and connected with the ancestral hall.
On the front of the wall of the water well, there are three characters "Da Shuijing" engraved on it, which is also the origin of the name "Da Shuijing".