Unique ancestral hall for women in Huizhou

Huizhou, situated at the southern tip of Anhui Province, is a place where you can easily reflect on feudal times as you stroll through ancestral halls and memorial archways.

The Qingyi Hall, the only ancestral hall built for  women in old China. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.com]

In ancient China, the ancestral hall was the centre of a clan and also the spiritual home of its members.

At that time, important events usually took place in such halls, such as ancestral worship ceremonies of a clan, important decision-making and reward and punishment of all kinds.

Those with different family names were never allowed in, as the hall was taken as a symbol of clan unification, said Bao Caihong, a tour guide at the Tangyue Village in Shexian County.

While for the women, they could enter these halls only once during their lifetime - on their wedding day, the guide told reporters, explaining that it was because the female was considered to be inferior to the male in old China and thus not allowed to appear during formal occasions.

However, there was one exception in Tangyue Village where the only ancestral hall designed for women in the country was built 200 years ago.

Then how could this happen in feudal times when the women were looked down upon?

The tour guide explained that the unique hall had a story linked to her clan - the Bao family - a once powerful name in the salt business during the Qing Dynasty.

The builder of the hall, Bao Qiyun, lost his parents when he was just eight years old. Luckily he had an elder brother and was brought up by his sister-in-law. After making his fortune through the salt business, Bao returned to his hometown and decided to repay his sister-in-law by building her a hall.

The clan leader agreed, but recommended that the hall be built in the name of the village's 59 widows, all of whom remained loyal to their husbands and did not remarry after they died. They were taken as role models of chastity, which was considered the best virtue for women in ancient China.

After that, these widows had their names etched in the family ancestral hall and were worshipped by their offspring.