The gate of Xiyuan Courtyard faces the east and the lane, showing a figure of eight. In ancient times, the eight-character gate usually meant a mansion with a certain level of officials. Hu is a four-product imperial dynasty, and you are the magistrate of Kaifeng, so Xiyuan is naturally a family that is either rich or expensive. On the right side of the courtyard are three two-story buildings with one entrance and three rooms, each with the same layout, except that the first wall is about 1.5 meters higher than the second and third buildings, and it is towering and straight. The hierarchy in Qing dynasty was strict, and men were superior to women. The first building is obviously the residence of the owner Hu, and the second and third buildings are occupied by maids and maids in turn, so it is natural that the walls are short.
On the left side of the yard is a long and narrow garden. This garden is long and narrow, in front of the main doors of three mansions. Maybe it will become a paragraph. With extraordinary wisdom and rich imagination, the master built a small garden into the most beautiful courtyard in Xidi. It's really amazing that small water droplets reflect the big sun!
There are many talents in Xidi, and many dignitaries and Confucian businessmen in Dajia have returned to their hometowns to build houses. Land is very precious. In order to create a quiet and ethereal artistic conception in the narrow front yard, the owner divided the yard into three parts, namely, front yard, middle court and backyard. The brick wall between the front yard and the middle court has a huge brick carving window on the right side and an arch on the left side. The door is inlaid with the horizontal plaque of "Xiyuan" seal script, with green characters on the green background, which is like green mountains and green waters, exquisite and elegant. There are rockeries, flower stands, bonsai, cypress trees and palm trees in the front yard. Walking into the front yard, I saw the bluestone ground was black and blue, the trees were swaying and the flowers were overflowing. Through the leaking window, you can vaguely see the scenery of the Intermediate People's Court and the backyard, adding a bit of quiet and profound beauty. The other two stone carvings embedded on both sides of the gate of the mansion are "peerless works" in Huizhou's "three wonders". Legend has it that it was made by Yu Xiang, a famous stone carving artist in Xidi. Yu Xiang was born in poverty and studied stone carving with his father since childhood. Because of his cleverness and daring to be unconventional, his stone carving works are original. Because Yu Xiang is a native of his hometown, he is ordinary at ordinary times, and people don't admire his stone carvings. He had to leave his hometown and come to Lingnan to seek development. This leaky stone carving is a work left by Yu Xiang in Xidi.
According to local people, Xidi just started to develop tourism in the early 1990s. A Japanese collector offered to buy two Yuxiang stone carvings for $65,438+,but the owner politely refused.
The stone carving with a leaking window in the West Garden has a turquoise figure on the left and a bamboo and plum figure on the right, which are collectively called "three friends in the cold year". This allusion originated from Su Dongpo, a famous writer in the Northern Song Dynasty. In the second year of Yuanfeng in North Song Shenzong, Su Dongpo was demoted as a "sinner" and placed under the jurisdiction of Huangzhou (now Huanggang). Four paintings of Tang Xuebi in his mansion are covered with snowflakes, and the garden is full of pine trees, bamboo and plums. Once, Xu Junyou, the magistrate of Huangzhou, visited him in Tang Xue and jokingly said, "Your mansion is full of snowflakes. Don't you think it is too cold and snowy? Su Dongpo looked around the flowers and trees in the courtyard, and Qingyin replied: "Wind and spring are two kinds of music, and pine and bamboo are three friends." Since then, "Three Friends of Old Leng" has become the ideal character of people with lofty ideals in China. There is a kind of beautiful implication in his stone carving works, which is the spiritual realm pursued by Hu, the owner of the mansion. Without it, you will lose the noble sentiment of lingering fragrance in the cold, and you will lose the artistic conception of "sticking to the green hills and not relaxing, the cold plum trees and sparse bamboo are romantic".
The stone carving with a leaking window in the West Garden has a turquoise figure on the left and a bamboo and plum figure on the right, which are collectively called "three friends in the cold year".
The leaking window of Yuxian stone carving adopts a whole piece of Yixian bluestone through carving, which is atmospheric in layout and appropriate in density, echoing left and right. Tiny plum branches, smart bamboo leaves, hard rocks and lean pine stems show the author's exquisite knife work and profound artistic accomplishment, which is a masterpiece of famous stone carving.