The ancestral hall and ancestor veneration narrative of a Huizhou lineage in Ming–Qing China

ABSTRACT As a venerable institution of ancestor veneration, ancestral halls remained buildings reserved for the gentry class before the Ming dynasty, and became vehicles for transmitting a form of elitism within a privileged circle. Hence, owning ancestral halls was also deemed a manifestation of political and social status. However, among the commoner class in the Huizhou region in the Ming, numerous localized kinship organizations emerged: lineages. People were gathering strength in the communal living maintained by generations, but at the same time, they also generated a demand for common ancestor veneration to maintain lineage relationship stability. By the mid-Ming, with the surge of ancestral hall construction by lineages, the exclusive privilege of the elites for ancestral halls was broken. In Huizhou, a unique sacrificial culture with the ancestral halls as the carrier appeared. In the subsequent period of rapid economic growth, an influential new group emerged within the lineages: merchants whose increasing involvement in constructive activities allowed the ancestral hall construction to bloom, reflecting the rising status of merchants in this period. This paper focuses on such a Huizhou kinship organization, the Huang lineage, and describes the history of their ancestral hall construction in detail.


Introduction
Traditionally, in southern China, especially in the rural areas of Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong provinces, many or even most villages were closely associated with kinship organizations known as lineages. Among these lineage-associated villages, there have existed many ancestral halls (ancestral shrines) for ancestor veneration, which played an important role in village life and society.
Huizhou 徽州, a region whose name no longer appears on any contemporary maps, was wellknown for its ancient and powerful lineages and ancestral hall culture. 1 Located in south Anhui Province, contiguous to both Jiangxi and Zhejiang provinces, the former Huizhou had governed the six counties of She, Xiuning, Wuyuan, Qimen, Yi, and Jixi ( Figures 1, and 3). In rural Huizhou, each of the villages might contain one or more lineage settlements. Even in towns, there were streets occupied with people of the same lineage. Historically, nearly all lineages in Huizhou could trace their ancestry to Han immigrants from the North, and most claim that their ancestors arrived during the Tang and Song dynasties (618-1279) (McDermott 2013, 45-47). Proud of glorious surnames and family histories, they loved to compile their genealogies and were keen on building ancestral halls (Yu 2016, 14).
Compared with the long lineage history, the development of Huizhou ancestral halls occurred relatively late. Before the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), only scholar-officials 2 and imperial family members could build a separate family temple to venerate their ancestors. Commoners were allowed to venerate their deceased parents at home, and another option for them was to venerate their ancestors in a graveyard or in a Buddhist temple. Sometimes, they would build a small shrine next to the ancestral grave to look after the grave and offer sacrifices (Tam 2011, 38). Zhu Xi, the Neo-Confucian master of the Song dynasty, once articulated the construction principles of the commoner's ancestral hall in his Family Rituals, but these principles were simply his ideal of establishing a Neo-Confucian ritual system and were not widely adopted in that era ( Figure 2). However, during the Ming dynasty, with the development of lineage power, the building of ancestral halls by commoners became uncontrollable. By the late fifteenth century, Huizhou's ancestral halls were said to "number in the hundreds", which eventually caused the Ming government to recognize the legitimacy of the commoner's ancestral hall in 1536. After that, venerating ancestors in ancestral halls became a common custom for Huizhou lineages (McDermott 2013, 178-179).
Since the mid-Ming dynasty (the sixteenth century), there have been detailed records of ancestral halls included in Huizhou genealogies, usually involving property registers, land use registers, regulations of ancestral halls, sacrifice rituals, and records of building ancestral halls. These records reflect the construction situation of Huizhou ancestral halls and their relevant sociocultural factors (Lü 2016, 21-22). However, the large number of Huizhou Ming-Qing genealogies, as well as the diversity and complexity of their content, prevents us from conducting a comprehensive study. Hence, this paper focuses on a quintessential Huizhou genealogy: Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu, which was compiled by the people with the surname Huang in Tandu village. This genealogy contains a wealth of literature with regard to ancestral halls. In addition to written records, there are many exquisite illustrations. The historical and cultural features of ancestral halls in the Ming and Qing dynasties vividly unfold through  the abundant documents. "In Huizhou, there are few genealogies comparable to it" (Cao 2017, 114).
THZ consists of 10 volumes, including pedigree charts, village paintings, ancestral profiles, family precepts, ancestral graves, ancestor veneration, family biographies, feminine virtues, and literature collections, whose compilation occurred over more than two centuries. The original edition of this genealogy appeared around 1507, compiled by Huang Hua, the 24th-generation ancestor of the Huang lineage. Between 1567 and 1572, Huang Xuanbao, a Confucian scholar born in Tandu village, recompiled this genealogy based on surveying the descent lines of four Huang lineages resident in Huizhou. The final edition was published in 1731 after several additions and revisions during the following hundred years (Huang 1731). In addition, the illustrations in the genealogy were all painted by Huang Lü, a renowned scholar-artist in the early Qing dynasty.
In this paper, we start by examining the origins and history of the Huang lineage in order to discuss the opportunity for building ancestral halls in Tandu village with their development history. Then, we comprehensively examine the ancestral hall literature included in Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu; we produce an analysis of the recorded ancestral halls including the construction era and the scope of ancestor veneration, in order to help classify the ancestral halls; and we cross-analyse the underlying sociocultural dynamics from which each ancestral hall type appeared. Lastly, based on historical paintings and the "land area map (弓口圖)", we derive the layouts of the ancestral halls to analyse the spatial configuration characteristics. Considering the changing role of ancestral halls around the mid-Ming dynasty, this paper seeks to uncover the historical line with which the Huizhou lineage developed collective ancestor veneration by building ancestral halls.

Tandu village: the formation of Huang's settlement
The Huang lineage was one of the most ancient lineages in Huizhou. According to an early pedigree chart of the Huang lineage 3 recorded in the first volume of Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu, Huang Ji, a historical figure in the Eastern Jin dynasty (266-420), is generally considered to be their Primary Ancestor. During the early fourth century, Huang Ji was posted to She County as an official, marking the beginning of the Huang lineage in Huizhou. The early Huang lineage mainly lived near Huangdun in the southwest of She County. Since the seventh century, some of the lineage members began to move to the surrounding areas to establish their own settlements, and Huang Zhang was among them. Around 706, he moved from Huangdun north to Tandu 4 and settled down.
Tandu village was situated by the Fengle River, a tributary of the Xin'an River (the largest waterway in Huizhou), and not too far from the county town ( Figure 2). Initially being a small habitation dependent on farming along the riverbanks, by the early Ming dynasty, it had become a settlement with more than 31 households. 5 At the same time, the descendants of Huang Zhang who first settled in Tandu, also developed eight branches (Figure 4). 6 Due to the lack of sufficient farmland, some of these descendants had to go out for business through the waterways. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, relying on the superior water transport of the Xin'an River that linked the lower Yangtze River, merchants in the Huang lineage began to achieve success in business, especially in the salt trade. They attained great wealth, much of which returned to the village in the form of education subsidies and village construction. While these merchants left the village, they generally remained loyal to their ancestral home (Zhou 2016, 39-48).
The second volume of Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu opens with a landscape painting, depicting the prosperous of Tandu village in the early Qing in a panorama style. 7 The whole village and its surroundings are depicted as a long scroll with a broad Fengle River in the foreground and continuous mountains in the background ( Figure 5).
When one observes the historical features of Tandu village in this painting, the first thing that is noticeable is the architecture. The left half of the painting is the settlement surrounded by farmlands and scattered clumps of trees, where there are large numbers of houses standing side by side, dominantly residences in appearance. Some significant buildings scattered in the settlement, such as ancestral halls and memorial archways, can be identified by the words marked in the painting. The right half shows the scenery on both sides of the Fengle River, focusing on a road leading to the settlement and the architecture along the road. There are mainly temples and ancestral halls varying in architectural style, from huts to temples with front and backyards, and even an ancestral hall complex consisting of multiple halls and courtyards.
In the painting, there is a total of 16 ancestral halls in and around the village: A large ancestral hall beside the bank of Fengle River outside the village, five ancestral halls in the village east, two ancestral halls at the rear of the village, and the other eight ancestral halls in the village west. In the next chapter, we put forward a classified discussion of these ancestral halls.

Ancestral hall construction: Confucianism, familism, and mercantile society
In order to further understand the historical context of ancestral halls in Tandu village, we collected and summarized documents with regard to the ancestral halls in Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu, and we made a general table of the sixteen ancestral halls in Tandu village ( Table 1). Based on the scope of ancestor veneration, these sixteen ancestral halls can be classified into four groups: (a) those attached to a graveyard and dedicated to the tomb owner, (b) those specially dedicated to some meritorious ancestors, (c) those dedicated to lineal ancestors of a certain branch, and (d) those dedicated to all ancestors.

Grave shrine
An ancestral hall that is attached to a graveyard is commonly called a "grave shrine (墓祠)". As mentioned earlier, Huizhou natives have a practice of offering sacrifices to their ancestors in grave shrines. However, this practice was no longer popular by the mid-Ming dynasty. "The decline of grave shrines can be attributed to the fact that the Ming government extended the privilege of building ancestral halls to commoners in 1536, which led them to legally construct more separate ancestral halls to replace grave shrines" (Chang 2003, 37). This argument can also be confirmed by the number of grave shrines in Tandu village.
Among the 14 graveyards around the village, there is only a Grave Guarding Shrine built in 1520. Type Content Grave shrine Grave Guarding Shrine (Lumu suo 盧墓所) was built attached to the grave of the third-generation ancestor Huang Guang and his wife.
In 1520, it was built along with the Memorial Archway of the Dutiful Son (Xiaozi fang孝子坊) in the graveyard. After being burnt down in 1545, this ancestral hall was abandoned for more than a hundred years, and it was not rebuilt until 1711. In the courtyard of the ancestral hall, there is also a stele pavilion that was built around 1649. a Special shrine Shrine of the Dutiful Son (Xiaozi ci 孝子祠), dedicated to Huang Rui, the fourth-generation ancestor who was well-known for filial piety, which is located adjacent to an association house in the village east. b Both buildings were built in 1465 and renovated in 1723. Directly in front, there is a Memorial Archway of Filial Duties (Jingxiao fang 旌孝坊) that was erected in 1493. c Shrine of Elegant Gathering (Jimei ci 濟美祠), built in 1507, was originally the former home of the 24th-generation ancestor Huang Hua.
Shortly after Huang Hua's death, this house was sold to the literati association in the village, and converted into an ancestral hall dedicated to Huang Hua during 1514 to 1521. Later on, some ancestors of literati type were also worshiped in this ancestral hall. The ancestral hall was renovated three times in 1663, 1669, and 1716, with funding by the literati association. d Shrine of the Hermit (Yimin ci逸民祠), was jointly set up by the four branches of Cuncheng, Chunhui, Liao'e and Sicheng to venerate their common ancestors, Huang Xiaoze (honoured De'an gong), and his later generations. e Built in 1536, but later partially collapsed due to poor maintenance, this ancestral hall was not restored until 1596. f Shrine of Great Virtue (Hude ci 壺德祠), built from 1717 to 1722, dedicated to female ancestors of the first generation to the thirty-sixth generation. g Shrine of Reflections (Ying ci 影祠), formerly a charitable granary, was built in 1532 to store up grain in case of famine. Between 1662 and 1722, the granary was renovated and converted into an ancestral hall to venerate Huang Tinghao, the founder of the charitable granary. h Branch hall Hall of Expressing Gratitude (Siyang tang 思養堂), was established by the 15th-generation ancestor Huang Ying, based on turning his residence into a sacrificial hall for his deceased parents. i Hall of Eternal Longing (Yongsi tang 永思堂), was built for the 15th-generation ancestor Huang Xiang and his descendants. j Hall of Promoting Friendliness (Dunmu tang 敦睦堂), was built between 1341 and 1370, formerly the home of the 18th-generation ancestor Huang Jinsheng, and subsequently his family ancestral hall. k Hall of Living Cozily (Yi'an tang 貽安堂), was built for the 19th-generation ancestor Huang Guanshou. l Hall of Remaining Honest (Cuncheng tang 存誠堂), was first built by the 21st-generation ancestor Huang Gunsun to serve his parents.
Shortly after its completion, this house was destroyed by fire and later rebuilt into a family ancestral hall in 1489. m Hall of Spring Sunshine (Chunhui tang 春暉堂) was built in 1380, formerly known as the home that the 20th-generation ancestor Huang Xi built for his mother, and later converted into his family ancestral hall. n Hall of Pursuing Integrity (Sicheng tang 思誠堂), in which the spirit tablets of the 22nd-generation ancestor Huang Xinshou and his descendants are placed. The ancestral hall was rebuilt in 1499 after being burnt down in 1489.°H all of Reminiscence (Liao'e tang 蓼莪堂), an ancestral hall where the 22nd-generation ancestor Huang Tiantong venerated his ancestors, which was turned by his home built in 1425. p Hall of Swallow Wing (Yanyi tang 燕翼堂), was built between 1500 and 1505, by the 22nd-generation ancestor Huang Wensheng and his sons. q Lineage hall Grand ancestral hall (Dazong ci 大宗祠), dedicated to ancestors of the whole lineage, whose construction started between 1628 and 1644, but was interrupted by the war during the transitional period from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty. The construction was not completed until 1662 to 1687. r Later, in 1718, the ancestral hall was seriously damaged in a major flood, and it was not renovated until 1722. s a See "Notice on raising funds to renovate the dutiful son's Grave Guarding Shrine (募重修孝子廬墓所疏)," in Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu,vol. 5: 81. b See "Record of renovating the ancestral hall dedicated to the dutiful son Huang Rui (重修故唐旌孝子黄府君祠堂记)," in ibid., vol. 6: 10-11. c See "Painting of the Shrine of the Dutiful Son (孝子祠圖)," in ibid., vol. 6: 3. The construction of the Grave Guarding Shrine was a deliberate decision that was closely related to a legend of the fourth-generation ancestor Huang Rui and the Confucian ideology of filial piety. The story begins with Huang Rui taking care of his sick mother. According to his biographer: Shortly afterwards, his mother's death orphaned him. In mourning, he built a hut alongside his parents' grave, where he served them day and night as if they were alive. 8 Having become widespread during the early Ming dynasty, Huang Rui's story was recognized as a paradigm of filial piety by the Ming government in 1493. The growing social influence prompted the Huang lineage to build the Grave Guarding Shrine on the former site of the hut where Huang Rui once mourned for his parents.

Special shrine
The term "special shrine (專祠)" appears in those literature references that are concerned with the Shrine of the Dutiful Son, Shrine of Elegant Gathering, Shrine of the Hermit, Shrine of Great Virtue, and Shrine of Reflections. The principal ancestors venerated in these special shrines are generally described as highly respected historical figures, such as Huang Rui, who is well-known for filial piety, Huang Hua, who is praised for his literary attainments, and Huang Xiaoze, who is admired for his loyalty to the Song dynasty and refusal to surrender to the Mongols. Furthermore, we also notice that their images are enshrined in these shrines. For example, Huang Xiaoze's portrait is enshrined in the Shrine of the Hermit, flanked by the spirit tablets of his descendants, and Huang Tinghao's portrait is placed in the Shrine of Reflections to worship, while in the Shrine of Elegant Gathering, the images of the ancestors are even enshrined together with a Daoist statue. It is obvious that these phenomena violate a general principle in Confucian doctrine that "the ancestral hall is a place to venerate ancestors, not to worship deities".
Since the eleventh century, many devout Confucian scholars have advocated the use of spirit tablets to represent ancestors, and they have insisted that "if the appearance of the character in the painting is slightly different from that of the ancestor, it cannot be used to represent the ancestor" (Azuma 2012, 128). In most temples, gods are usually represented by images. In addition to Buddhist and Daoist temples, the most common temples are the temples for historical worthies and meritorious officials that reflect the Confucian ideology of righteousness and state loyalty, called "memorial temples (祠廟)". During the Song and Yuan dynasties (960-1368), the memorial temples in Huizhou were mostly dedicated to some ancient ancestors of notable lineages, who were sometimes deified as guardian deities. "To be exact, the memorial temple is a special shrine of a higher level, granted by the imperial court" (Lin 2009, 37).
By the early Ming dynasty, some members of the Huang lineage were becoming aware that if they were to attract more kinsmen to venerate ancestors with them, they needed to build an ancestral hall for their common ancestor. Their first consideration was to build a special shrine for Huang Rui, partly because his descendants accounted for the majority of the lineage, and partly because his image of filial piety conformed to the Confucian orthodoxy values. In 1465, Huang Rui's Shrine of the Dutiful Son was completed, along with a village association house on its left side. These two buildings formed a six-room hall, where sacrificial rituals would be performed on a regular annual basis: On the first day of each year, Huang Rui's descendants, men and women, old and young, would visit the ancestral hall to pay homage. Formal sacrificial rituals would be held in the autumn and spring under the leadership of the patriarch [. . .]. 9 Compared with the Shrine of the Dutiful Son, the Shrine of the Hermit built in the mid-Ming dynasty is more secularized. In addition to the veneration of the principal ancestor Huang Xiaoze, the spirit tablets of his descendants were also allowed to be housed in the ancestral hall, which became a decisive step for the Huang lineage to realize collective ancestor veneration. Referring to the "Contract for building an ancestral hall and placing a spirit tablet", the criterion to determine whose ancestor's spirit tablets could be put into the ancestral hall is solely commercialized: By donating thirty liang 兩 of silver, you can house a spirit tablet for a deceased relative in the ancestral hall, or you can pay fifteen liang in advance to prepare a tablet for yourself. 10 Before that, however, the social status of ancestors and their contribution to the lineage had to be taken into consideration. For example, the ancestors venerated in the Shrine of Elegant Gathering were required to have literary and artistic achievements.
In addition, there is a special shrine dedicated to women ancestors in the village, the Shrine of Great Virtue. Admittedly, the Song dynasty Neo-Confucian texts propound a model of ancestor veneration dominated by all the male descendants of a male founder (Inoue 2008, 89-97). However, this model was not universally adopted with rigor. The Huang lineage allowed a specific role for women as objects and indeed performers of ancestral sacrifice, and they also built a separate ancestral hall for women. The construction for the Shrine of Great Virtue was primarily funded by merchants such as the salt trader Huang Yizheng. With the great wealth brought by commercial success, as a new power in the lineage, merchants gained more say in the ancestral hall construction, which had formerly been dominated by the lineage elders. They described their original intention for building the women's ancestral hall: Our hometown is located in a remote mountainous area. Adult men either go out to study or engage in business in distant places, leaving home for many years or even decades. Raising children depends on the mother alone. [. . .] We cannot repay our mother too much for her great kindness to us. 11

Branch hall
The Huang lineage also took care of the needs of ancestor veneration for various branches in the lineage. Each of the branches has a separate ancestral hall dedicated to its own lineal ancestors, namely a "branch hall (支祠)". Careful study found that most of these branch halls were converted from the former home of deceased ancestors, such as the Hall of Expressing Gratitude, Hall of Promoting Friendliness, Hall of Remaining Honest, Hall of Spring Sunshine, and Hall of Reminiscence. Although it is difficult to determine the exact time when these houses were converted, at least the description in the "Preface to the building of lineage hall by the Huang lineage in Tandu" indicates that by no later than the late Ming dynasty (the early seventeenth century), these houses had been used for ancestor veneration: At present [in the late Ming era], there have been many branch halls in the village, but there was no ancestral hall dedicated to our Primary Ancestor Huang Ji, the First settler Huang Zhang and other early ancestors, which make us feel uneasy. 12 This description also provides yet another speculation that in the mid-Ming era or even later, some ordinary families without official positions, a Confucian education, and considerable wealth might still have had no means to venerate ancestors in a separate ancestral hall, that is, outside the home. Therefore, their compromise was to turn the home of deceased ancestors into ancestral halls.

Lineage hall
Having met the wishes and demands of various branches to venerate ancestors, some members of the lineage then appealed to extending ancestor veneration to the whole lineage by building a comprehensive ancestral hall, namely a "lineage hall (統宗祠)". Such a zeal for ancestor veneration was in part intended to please ancestors and in part to retain the loyalty of lineage members. The new lineage hall would become a venue for ancestor veneration as well as for interaction among members of the lineage. 13 With the support of merchants, this large lineage hall was built from the late Ming era until the early Qing era, in which dozens of generations of ancestral spirit tablets were housed in proper genealogical order, dating back to before the First Settler. Merchants gave a veritable name to this lineage hall, the Grand Ancestral Hall, and they set up a trust granary to finance the sacrificial rituals, management, and maintenance: The registration, sealing, storage, sale and distribution of rent grain should be managed by two specially appointed leaders of the lineage. [. . .] On the spring and autumn veneration days, members of the literati association should enter the ancestral hall to check the account of sacrificial properties. The remaining property for sacrificial rituals shall, as appropriate, subsidize needy students of the lineage to sit for the Civil Service Examination. 14

Ancestral hall configuration: the heritage and transformation
In the fifth volume of "Ancestral graves (祖墓)" and the sixth volume of "Ancestor veneration (祠祀)", we find the land area maps of the six ancestral halls, including the Grave Guarding Shrine, Shrine of the Dutiful Son, Shrine of the Hermit, Shrine of Elegant Gathering, Shrine of Great Virtue, and Grand Ancestral Hall. A land area map is a kind of measuring map for the purpose of a land use register, such as the "Homestead Area Map of Grand Ancestral Hall (大宗 祠地基積步圖)" (Figure 6). This map depicts the spatial configuration and layout of the Grand Ancestral Hall, with the width and depth dimensions of its various spaces, based on which its plane layout can be estimated. 15 Similarly, we can draw the layout plans of other five ancestral halls (Figure 8). In addition, many construction details in these six ancestral 11 See "Brief record of newly building the special shrine for mothers (新建享妣專祠記畧)," in ibid., vol. 6: 34. 12 See "Preface to the completion of lineage hall by the Huang lineage in Tandu (潭渡黃氏完建統宗祠序)," in ibid., vol. 6: 25. 13 See "Stelae inscription of the Huang's Grand Ancestral Hall in the filial piety village of Tandu (潭渡孝行里黃氏大宗祠碑記)," in ibid., vol. 6: 27. 14 See "Provisions resulting from public discussion (公議規條)," in ibid., vol. 6: 28-29. 15 In Huizhou region in the Ming and Qing dynasties, landowners commonly measured land in units of areal bu 步 and mu 畝, and the exchange rate adopted in Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu is 280 areal bu per mu. In addition, the conservative scholarly opinion considers that one mu roughly equals 0.14 acre (McDermott 2014, xv). halls can be verified by their historical paintings (Figure 7).

Construction scale
Referring to (Table 2), the construction scale of the six ancestral halls ranges from 0.42 mu to 4.32 mu. As a rule, before an ancestral hall was built, the money for the property and the land would be raised from the lineage members, which could be seen as a "crowdfunding" method. How big the ancestral halls could be built mainly depended on the amount of donations raised. The construction for the Shrine of the Hermit is the most exemplary representation: In the early years of the Jiajing period, Huang Xianfu led members of the four branches to survey a piece of land to the village west, where he planned to build an ancestral hall for their common ancestor, Huang Xiaoze. [. . .] He lobbied rich family members to donate money and promised donors that their spirit tablets could be put in the ancestral hall. 16 Obviously, for the lineage members, whether the spirit tablets of their ancestors can be housed in the ancestral hall is a decisive condition to attract them to donate. In other words, the ancestral hall scale should correspond to the scope of the ancestors being venerated. Indeed, we see that Grand Ancestral Hall built for the whole lineage to venerate their ancestors has the largest area, at 4.32 mu, of all the ancestral halls, followed by the Shrine of Great Virtue dedicated to thirtysix generations of women ancestors, covering an area of 2.47 mu. Relatively speaking, the Shrine of the Hermit built for Huang Xiaoze and his descendants occupies a relatively small scale of 0.59 mu, while the Grave Guarding Shrine dedicated to Huang Rui and his parents is the smallest ancestral hall.

Courtyard layout
In addition to the significant differences in construction scale, these ancestral halls also have many differences in their spatial layouts, most notably in the arrangement and design of the courtyards. Some ancestral halls have only one courtyard, whereas others have several. Some courtyards are spacious, with walkways, terraces, and planted trees, whereas others are narrow without redundant components.

Grave Guarding Shrine
The Grave Guarding Shrine consists of a fence gate, a ceremony hall, and a long courtyard in which there is a wide walkway paved from south to north. As shown in Figure 7(a), this walkway starts from the fence gate and runs through the stele pavilion and Memorial Archway of the Dutiful Son to a ceremony hall at the rear. The open spaces beside the walkway are planted with several tall pine trees, symbolizing the immortal spirit of their ancestors with evergreen pines. At the back of the memorial archway, there is the grave of Huang Rui's parents, marginalized in a corner of the courtyard. Then by contrast, the stele pavilion and memorial archway built to praise Huang Rui's filial piety occupy the central area of the courtyard. To be more specific, this layout alludes to the dominant position of Huang Rui in the sacrificial ritual.

Shrine of the Dutiful Son
The Shrine of the Dutiful Son shares a courtyard with the adjacent association house, and there is a Memorial Archway of Filial Duties in front of it. In the "Painting of the Shrine of the Dutiful Son" (Figure 7(b)), we observed that wooden fences were installed between the columns of the memorial archway to serve as the main gate. The walls extending from both sides of the memorial archway are connected to the outer walls of the two buildings to form the courtyard space. According to the written records, the courtyard is surrounded by covered walkways, with corner doors on the east and west sides leading to the outside. Regarding the main gate and the corner gates, there are the following provisions: The main gate could only be opened on the veneration days, when people would gather in the front Square, along the central walkway, and line up to enter the ancestral hall from the main gate. But on other days, people could only enter through the corner doors on the east or west side. 17

Shrine of Elegant Gathering
In the "Painting of the Shrine of Elegant Gathering" (Figure 7(c)), one can see an impression that is different from the other ancestral halls. The spacious courtyard is planted with various trees, such as plantain, pine, prune, goldenrain, ginkgo, and osmanthus trees, mostly distributed around the pond in front of the bedchamber. Outside the courtyard, there is a twostory library hidden by a bamboo grove, named the Pavilion of Mount Huang. Given that this ancestral hall was converted from Huang Hua's former home, we infer that its architectural style reflects Huang Hua's aesthetic tastes. The elegant courtyard

Shrine of the Hermit
The Shrine of the Hermit is mainly composed of three buildings, the front gate, main hall, and bedchamber, which are arranged longitudinally and separated by courtyards. The kitchen, dining hall and other outbuildings are located on the west side of the ancestral hall and connected to the front yard through a corner door. Each building and each courtyard have specific functions: [Among them], the main hall situated in the middle and the spacious yard in front are used for holding sacrificial rituals, and the bedchamber [also known as the resting place of the soul] at the back is a place to house and enshrine spirit tablets. The kitchen was built outside to provide free meals for those who came to venerate ancestors. 19 In addition, the scenery around the Shrine of the Hermit is also depicted in the "Painting of the Shrine of the Hermit". On the southwest sides of the ancestral hall, there are two lotus flower-filled ponds: the square pond in the south is called the Five Immortals Pond, and the arcuate pond connected with it in the north is called the Upper Pond (Figure 7(d)).

Grand ancestral hall
The main part of Grand Ancestral Hall consists of four courtyards along a central axis and five buildings including the fence gate, front gate, ritual gate, hall, and bedchamber. The three-entry gate design highlights the ritual sense of the complex, and the four flagpoles standing in front of the ancestral hall signal the success of some lineage members in the Civil Service Examination (Tam 2011, 38). The first yard is the smallest of all, with two osmanthus trees symmetrically planted beside the central walkway, implying the family prosperity. In the second yard, there are two brick censers for burning joss paper built against the courtyard walls on both sides. The third yard is the most spacious. In this yard, pine trees are planted beside the central walkway, and there is a stalactite rockery under the lower pine tree on the west side. In the last yard, a square terrace was built in front of the bedchamber, and this terrace is said to be a stage for performing sacrificial songs and dances during ancestor veneration (Figure 8(e)). A row of outbuildings can also be seen on the east side of the main part. Closer observation reveals the presence of a kitchen, a dining hall, and many houses with unknown functions (some may be used as warehouses and lounges), as well as a tutelary deity shrine. While there are few descriptions with regard to the context of this shrine, we infer that it probably existed before the Grand Ancestral Hall was built, because according to local customs, in a lineage village, the shrine dedicated to tutelary deities generally predates ancestral halls (McDermott 2013, 61).

Shrine of Great Virtue
The Shrine of Great Virtue, which is dedicated to women ancestors, likewise consists of four courtyards, and the configuration for the front gate, ritual gate, main hall and bedchamber is comparable to the Grand Ancestral Hall (Figure 7(e, f)): It follows the architectural form and style of Great Ancestral Hall, but its scale is relatively small. There is also a round-ridge roof library especially for women on the east side, known as the Moon Leaning Pavilion. 20 This consistency of architectural form and style implies the criticism of the Confucian doctrine of female inferiority by merchants. If the Grand Ancestral Hall represents the product of the heyday of familism and mercantile society, then the Shrine of Great Virtue expresses the respect and concern of merchants for women, praising their contributions to the lineage. However, there are also some formative differences between the two. In contrast to the striking entrance in the Grand Ancestral Hall, the entrance in the Shrine of Great Virtue is small and hidden on the side, which is intended to protect women from the intrusion of the outside world.

Configuration characteristics
As mentioned earlier, the Ming government extended the privilege of building ancestral halls to commoners in 1536 so that they could construct more ancestral halls to achieve collective ancestor veneration. In this regard, we also noticed the differences of the spatial configuration in the ancestral halls built before and after this turning point. For the ancestral halls built before 1536, the Shrine of the Dutiful Son connected with the association house is not strictly a separate ancestral hall. The Grave Guarding Shrine was built on the graveyard and its scale is relatively small. The Shrine of Elegant Gathering was converted from Huang Hua's former home, which retains its original shape and style to a great extent. Hence, we can deduce that these early ancestral halls were built without considering the needs of collective ancestor veneration (Figure 8(a), (b), (c)).
In the layout of Shrine of Hermit (Figure 8(d)), one can see the transformation of the spatial configuration in order to adapt to the demand for collective ancestor veneration. Compared with the early ancestral halls, this Special shrine, built in 1536, contains more architectural and courtyard space, and each of the spaces has been given a specific function. For example, the main hall is intended for sacrificial rituals, and the bedchamber is intended for enshrining spirit tablets.
Built in the early Qing period, the Grand Ancestral Hall and the Shrine of Great Virtue also continued the configuration principle of the Shrine of the Hermit. As the scope of ancestor veneration expanded to the whole lineage, alongside the financial support provided by wealthy merchants, the ancestral hall scale was allowed to enlarge (Figure 8(e, f)). In addition to increasing the numbers of courtyard and gates, the scale of each building was expanded to five rooms, or even seven rooms, while the Ming ancestral halls usually have only three rooms. Furthermore, the merchants developed elaborate and colourful architectural styles as a way to display their economic strength and social status. The exquisite ornamentation and large scales were incomparable to the Ming ancestral halls.
Accordingly, we can assume that the basic configuration for an ancestral hall of collective ancestor veneration is such that a complex similar to the Shrine of the Hermit, which should consist of a front gate, main hall, bedchamber, courtyards, and outbuildings. However, the smaller construction scale limits the development of sacrificial activities. To further meet the needs of ancestor veneration for the whole lineage, a large comprehensive ancestral hall such as the Grand Ancestral Hall then emerged. In addition to regular sacrificial rituals, the Grand Ancestral Hall also provided social venues for the lineage members who came to venerate ancestors, including officials, scholars, and merchants. Behind the scenes, strong kinship relationships would accelerate and help the political, cultural, and commercial activities of the lineage members.

Conclusion
This study explores the history of the development of ancestral halls alongside its underlying ideologies in Huizhou, based on a genealogy book: Tandu xiaoli Huang shi zupu. Since the Ming dynasty, localized kinship organizations represented by Huizhou lineages established stable and strong kinship relations by developing ancestral halls to venerate common ancestors, and the Huang lineage, the protagonist in the genealogical narrative was among them.
From the Ming to the early Qing periods, the Huang lineage created many types of ancestral halls, such as the grave shrine, special shrine, branch hall, and lineage hall, to meet the needs of ancestor veneration for different groups within the lineage. During this period, the ritual system symbolizing the Confucian gentry class's cultural dominance had transformed in 1536, which reflected the acquiescence of the ruling class to the commoners' building of ancestral halls. In the ancestral halls built after 1536, whether these halls were special shrines or lineage halls, the Huang lineage optimized and standardized the spatial configurations in order to better meet the needs for collective ancestor veneration as well as for the social interaction of the lineage members. In contrast, the early ancestral halls had a relatively singular function; they were only intended for venerating specific ancestors. However, their spatial configurations showed freer and more diverse styles.
After the mid-Ming dynasty, the merchants' increasing involvement in constructive activities effectively promoted the ancestral hall development, which also led to the construction and sacrificial activities being commercialized. With commercial trends, they created ancestral halls with exquisite ornamentation and large scales, but at the same time, they dared to transcend the traditions of the Confucian ritual system by building an ancestral hall for women. This phenomenon implied a crisis that the traditional gentry class's cultural dominance was being encroached upon by the rising merchant class. Indeed, different types of ancestral halls in this period also coincided with the commoners' dogmatism against Confucian ideology.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Yeqian Zhang, a lecturer at the College of Landscape Architecture, Nanjing Forestry University in China, received a Ph. D. in Engineering from Aichi Institute of Technology, Japan in 2018. She now focuses on the research of architectural heritage and architectural narratology in South China.