Daqitou Village

Daqitou Village is the other name of Zheng Village in Leping Town in Sanshui District.

This village is an architecture group constructed by ancestral temples and civilian houses. In the village, the interior of the house was designed in the typical Cantonese way. There are three rooms and two corridors in every house. The front part of the house is enlarged in order to build a stone ridge on it. The extended part is just like the shape of a kettle mouth. On the side of the house, there is a pen-shaped tower, which is called Wen Tower. Under the tower, there stand two stones. The big one is about one meter in height and looks like an ink slab. The small one looks like a stamp. The tower and the stones compose a picture of four treasures of study, like writing brush, ink stick, ink slab and paper. All these express people’s hope that they want their descents to study hard and pass the imperial civil examination.

After a long time of “breaking up houses”, the house system in Zheng Village has finished. This reflects the developing history of the clans in the central area of Guangdong Province. As different houses are given to different descents, each descent enlarges his houses, builds up his own temple and ancestral temple on his land. As time passes, a unified and well-balanced architecture group forms here.