Sa Village 沙 村
Pre-amble
This information was originally on www.520zc.com/portal.php?mod=view&aid=4142&page=2, was captured on Oct 9, 2024, and provided to this site by Helen Wong
Chen Family of Sha Village
The Chen family of Sha Village, Xintang Town, Zengcheng District, Guangzhou City, which has a history of nearly a thousand years: the ancestors have emerged in large numbers like stars, and their thoughts have brought glory to future generations
There are two adjacent administrative villages in the west of Xintang Town , Zengcheng District, and south of National Highway 107, Nan'an Village and Xindun Village. Before the founding of New China, these two villages were a natural village called Sha Village. More than 60 years have passed, and people are still used to calling it Sha Village. After all, 60 years is very short compared to the nearly 1,000-year history of Sha Village. Most people in Sha Village are surnamed Chen. The ancestor is Chen Duo, who settled in Chenjialin, 6 kilometers north of Sha Village. Since the fifth generation, they have moved to the current Sha Village (Nan'an Village and Xindun Village), and have multiplied from generation to generation. So far, the population has exceeded 10,000.
Over the years, a new village was built on the beach.
According to the "Zengcheng County Chronicles" in the late Qing Dynasty, "Chenjialin is 90 miles southwest of the county seat. It is surrounded by mountains like a city, with many flat fields and fertile fields in the middle. It is more than 20 miles in circumference, with only two caves for entry and exit. The northern cave leads to Qinghu City, and the southern cave leads to Ganquan City. The ancestor of the Chen family in Shacun came from Bian to Guang and lived there. The fifth-generation grandson Dazhen first built a stone cave entrance with a plaque named Chenjialin." The ancestor of the Chen family in Shacun here refers to Chen Duo. It is also recorded in the "Shacun Chen Family Tree" that the first ancestor Chen Duo, whose name was Ke Shi, was from Bianjing, Henan (now Kaifeng). He served as a court official in the Southern Song Dynasty. After the Jingkang Incident, he followed the Song Dynasty to Hangzhou, and then came to Guangzhou to live.
At that time, Guangzhou City was under the jurisdiction of Nanhai and Panyu counties. Xicheng belonged to Nanhai, Dongcheng belonged to Panyu, and Chenjialin, where Chen Duo lived, belonged to Panyu, so he "became a Panyu person". Later, more and more silt was deposited at the mouth of the Dongjiang River, and the river bay south of Chenjialin became a sandy beach, which had more land for cultivation. In addition, there were rivers for boat transportation, so the Chen family living in Chenjialin moved to the beach and built a new village.
Because the land was formed by the accumulation of sand, people named it Sand Village. Sand Village was formed in this way. Before the sixth year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty, Sand Village belonged to Panyu. After that, Zengcheng County was divided into Longmen County, and Sand Village, which originally belonged to Panyu, was incorporated into Zengcheng. The Chen family of Sand Village officially became Zengcheng people. After the founding of New China, the ancient Sand Village was divided into two administrative villages, Nan'an and Xindun, Xintang Town, with the development of society.
Today, Chenjialin in the north of Shacun is beautiful with lakes and mountains. A 3-kilometer-long Chenjialin Avenue connects Shacun and the long-standing bloodline of the people of Shacun, which has well protected the birthplace of the Chen clan in Shacun. Of course, in addition to Chenjialin, the ancestors of the Chen family also left behind architectural relics such as ancestral halls of various sizes scattered in the two administrative villages of Nan'an and Xindun, as well as the ideological glory behind these historical relics.
Ancestral halls, open-air architectural museums spanning generations
Get off at the Shacun bus stop on the north side of National Highway 107, cross the pedestrian bridge, and go to the south side of the national highway to reach the current Nan'an Village. Today's Nan'an Village is no longer what it used to be. Entering from the Nan'an Central Road into the village, there are busy cars and people, high-rise buildings on both sides, and the market is full of various buying and selling sounds, which is very lively. It has developed into a small town, where there are still the low houses and courtyards and pastoral scenery commonly seen in rural areas, let alone the continuous fields and the smoke from the farmers' kitchens at noon.
Chen Guobiao, deputy secretary of the Nan'an Village Committee, told reporters that since the reform and opening up in the 1980s, land has been continuously expropriated, and the villagers who have gradually become rich have begun to build buildings outside. The original old houses are low and narrow, and they have long been unable to meet the villagers' pursuit of a higher quality of life. Walking 300 meters further along Nan'an Central Road, you can see a Tai Sui Temple. This is the so-called old village. Although there are new buildings, the floors are not high, and old houses can be seen everywhere. Some new houses even use the remaining blue bricks of the past to build walls and granite foundations.
There are many alleys between the houses, which are very narrow and can only accommodate two people walking side by side. Go right at the fork in the road at the Tai Sui Temple and you will soon reach the Pailou Street. This street is different from the previous road. It is paved entirely with granite. The first house on the street is an ancestral hall, named "Shock the World Famous Ancestor". There are several houses in the middle, some of which are made of red bricks and some of which are made of blue bricks. Next is the "Jiexi Chengong Temple". Some temples have been in disrepair for a long time and collapsed naturally due to wind and rain, leaving only rotten wood and bluestone piled up in a mess.
Careful people will find that the granite used to pave the road is not ordinary. Some stone tablets can still vaguely make out words, such as one of them with the words "Chen Jiaoli, the second place in the Daoguang Enke". At the end of the Pailou Street, turn right and go straight to the Ancestor Street. What catches your eye are two thick and tall longan trees. Behind the trees is the Chen's ancestral temple with shell walls, which is the ancestral temple of Chen Duo, the ancestor of Sha Village.
Next to the ancestor is the "Qujue Chengong Temple", the owner of which is Chen Dazhen, a historical and cultural celebrity in Zengcheng. Qujue Chengong Temple is smaller than the Chengong Temple in terms of specifications, but it is still well preserved. Coming out of the Chengong Temple of Qujue, we turn into Tongxin Alley along the alley on the east side. Walking in this alley, we can see the different walls of the ancient buildings from the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. It is said that a foreign cultural person once said that Tongxin Alley is an open-air architectural museum when he passed through this alley.
Ruizhen, the ninth ancestor of the Chen family
, walked south from the ancestral street and entered Xindun Village. The rebuilt "Chen's Ninth Generation Ancestral Temple" and "Chen Gong Temple, Deputy Envoy of Township Worthies" are more magnificent. There are more than a dozen ancestral halls scattered throughout Xindun Village, some of which have become residential houses, some are protected, and some of the names of ancestral halls were sealed during the Cultural Revolution and have not been unsealed yet. There are more than 30 ancestral halls of all sizes in the entire Sha Village, and there may even be more than this number. The role of the ancestral hall as a blood bond among the clan members is already very clear, but its significance as an "open-air architectural museum" needs to be further demonstrated. Township sages are like lamps, and many thoughts and glory will benefit future generations. There are
many historical and cultural celebrities in Sha Village, and they have always enjoyed the reputation of "seven generations of imperial examinations and six generations of township sages" among the people. According to the list of imperial examinations in the "Zengcheng County Chronicles" in the late Qing Dynasty, the number of Jinshi and Juren in Sha Village in Zengcheng accounted for a large proportion. Among them, there were 37 civil scholars in the county, 5 of whom were from Sha Village, accounting for 13.5% of the county; there were 307 civil scholars in the county, 29 of whom were from Sha Village, accounting for 9.4% of the county; there were 72 military scholars in the county, 7 of whom were from Sha
Village, accounting for 9.7% of the county. According to the county annals at that time, Zengcheng had 12 cities with about 60,000 households. Sha Village, which belonged to Ganquan City, had 800 households, accounting for about 1.3% of the total number of households in the county, while the number of Jinshi candidates accounted for about 10% of the county. The biographies of Chen Dazhen, Chen Zheng, Chen Ruizhen, Chen Xiqing, Chen Dao and other sages were also included in the biographies of characters in Guangdong General Records, Guangzhou Prefecture Records and Zengcheng County Records. It can be seen that Sha Village’s reputation of "seven generations of imperial scholars and six generations of local sages" is well-deserved, and Sha Village has indeed left a proud chapter in the history and culture of Zengcheng . Chen Dazhen, an honest official, was an honest official who was good at solving cases and benefited the people. After returning to his hometown, he read books, wrote articles, educated his descendants, and compiled the first local chronicle in Lingnan, "Nanhai Ke"; Chen Ruizhen was known for his filial piety and was the pioneer of Guangdong embroidery; Chen Zheng did not seek power and wealth, and severely punished evil, and was a model of teacher's morality. No matter how vivid these stories are, if they are only preserved in the pile of old papers, their practical educational significance will be greatly reduced. Fortunately, with the help of local writer Zhan Rusong, Nan'an Village Primary School collected and sorted out the history and culture of the village, compiled it into "Nan'an Primary School Textbook", and widely circulated it among teachers, students and villagers.
Chen Can'an, principal of Nan'an Primary School, told reporters that for various reasons, the gap between the younger generation and Chinese traditional culture is getting deeper and deeper, and it is not just a generational gap. It is not easy to awaken the memory sleeping in the blood. To this end, the school not only carries out traditional Shacun culture education among students, but also popularizes Shacun traditional culture among children's parents and grandparents, forming an atmosphere in which society, schools, and families jointly inherit excellent traditional culture and are influenced by the thoughts of Shacun predecessors.
Shacun is an ancient village with a profound cultural heritage, and it is also a village that entered the wave of reform and opening up very early and accepted the baptism of modernization. Chen Canan said that Shacun culture needs to be integrated into the pace of the times and endowed with the spirit and meaning of the times. They are doing this because the connotations of Shacun culture, such as patriotism, diligence, and justice, are consistent with the core values of socialism.
www.520zc.com/portal.php?mod=view&aid=4142&page=2&mobile=no Oct 9, 2024