Jiang Qinquan

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Jiang Qinquan, Male, Han, from Quanzhoushilicheng, Fujian, is a fifth-batch national representative bearer of Minnan Chuantong Residential Building Craftsmanship (Ⅷ-179). The tradition is documented in Quanzhoushilicheng, Fujian. Within the regional tradition and school record of Minnan Chuantong Residential Building Craftsmanship in Quanzhoushilicheng, Fujian: Later, the "Huanggongqi" palace-style grand residence thus became a model that local dwellings eagerly emulated, and it gradually spread far and wide. After the Southern Song imperial clan administration (Nanwai Zongzhengsi) relocated to Quanzhou, the palace-architecture craft of the Central Plains was brought into the folk sphere, further advancing the development of palace-style "Huanggongqi" (literally "imperial-palace-style") residential architecture. The Cai family ancient residential complex in Nan'an City is a quintessential example of palace-style grand residences (dacuo) of southern Fujian from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and has been listed as a nationally protected cultural relic site. The Cai family residential complex was built by Cai Qian, an overseas Chinese based in the Philippines, constructed successively from the fifth year of the Xianfeng reign of the Qing dynasty (1855) to the thirty-third year of the Guangxu reign (1907), spanning 52 years in total, covering 16,000 square meters, with a total of 400 rooms of various sizes. Facing south with its back to the north, each residence is either a two-courtyard or three-courtyard layout, with side wings (hucuo) or east-west wing rooms. The main buildings feature hard-gable and curved-ridge (juanpeng) roofs covered with red tiles and half-cylinder tiles, swallow-tail-shaped ridges, post-and-tie wooden frames, and richly carved beams and painted rafters. The entire complex is orderly, open, and finely laid out, reflecting the principal characteristics of traditional southern Fujian residential architecture of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The residence of Yang Amiao, a renowned late-Qing overseas Chinese located in Licheng District of Quanzhou City, is also a "Huanggongqi" palace-style residence and has been listed as a Fujian provincial-level protected cultural relic site. Its construction began in the twentieth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty (1894) and, taking 18 years, was completed in the third year of the Xuantong reign (1911).

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in March 1958 in Hui'an County, Fujian Province. He is a representative bearer of the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects in Minnan traditional residential building craftsmanship. He is a technician of Minnan traditional residential building construction. From the age of 13, under the careful instruction of his grandfather and father, he studied construction methods and techniques, and later systematically learned traditional residential building craftsmanship under Wang Weiyao and Zhang Youfang. The characteristics of his craft are: repairing the old as old, so that though built today it appears age-old; drawing widely on the strengths of many and incorporating them all; making the past serve the present and bringing forth the new; and vigorously promoting and disseminating regional cultural heritage. Within the documented technical tradition of Minnan Chuantong Residential Building Craftsmanship in Quanzhoushilicheng, Fujian: The traditional residential-building craft of southern Fujian is a product of the fusion of Central Plains culture and indigenous southern Fujian culture. Combined with Quanzhou's geographic and climatic conditions and cultural customs, it formed a distinctive architectural form that spread across southern Fujian—Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Xiamen and elsewhere—as well as to Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The most distinctive type of southern Fujian residence is commonly known as "Huanggongqi"; the Huian residential-building craft is most typically expressed through the construction of these palace-style grand residences (dacuo). "Huanggongqi" originated in the Tang Five-Dynasties period and has a history of over a thousand years to this day. At that time, Huang Jue, a concubine of the Min King Wang Shenzhi (862–925), was a native of Huian; favored by the king, she was granted special permission to build at home according to palace regulations and forms. These palace-style grand residences come in types such as single-side wing (dan hucuo), double-side wing (shuang hucuo), and four-side wing (si hucuo), and in forms such as three-bay and five-bay layouts; they adopt a horizontally expanding plan with depths of two, three, or five courtyards (luo). "Huanggongqi" uses courtyards as its organizing units, with corridors and covered walkways (guoshui) threading through the whole house. The buildings make extensive use of brick and tile, with stone foundations and perimeter walls built of red brick, post-and-tie wooden frames as the load-bearing structure, hard-gable roofs, and curved upturned swallow-tail-ridge roof ridges. The walls by the entrance feature brick-and-stone reliefs, and the window lattices are carved with flowers and birds—ornate decoration. Each grand residence is an independent household yet is linked to the others by stone paths paved with granite slabs; these paths serve both as walkways and as threshing grounds and places to rest and enjoy the cool. The Yang Amiao residence covers a total area of 1,349 square meters; its main building is a five-bay structure, with three-bay sections at the front of the east and west sides and symmetrical single-row side wings at the rear, with a depth of three courtyards. In front of the whole residence is laid a large stone courtyard (shicheng); the courtyard is enclosed by a brick wall, and on the east and west sides there are main gates opening directly to the outside. The residence has five courtyards in all, colloquially called "five plum blossoms opening to the skywells"; additionally, in front of the flower hall on the east side a square pavilion with a curved (juanpeng) roof was added, with wooden railings inside. The walls inside and outside the house, beneath the eaves, between partitions, at the column heads, and on the doors and windows are all adorned with exquisite wood carving, brick carving, lime (hui) carving, and stone carving, of which the blue-stone carving is the most refined. With the acceleration of modernization, urban redevelopment, and the rise of the real-estate construction industry, many traditional southern Fujian residences have been demolished or damaged. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Single, double and quadruple wing houses": Wing houses flanking the main block set both the width and the rank of the house, from single to quadruple. "Three or five bays, two to five rows deep": Horizontal bays and the number of rows set the scale of the house in both directions. "Stone footings and red brick enclosure walls": Stone footings and red brick walls dominate the materials, a ratio forced by the hot, wet and insect-prone climate. "Post-and-beam framing and swallowtail ridges": Load rests on a chuan-dou frame; the hard-gabled roof ends in curved swallowtail ridges that define the silhouette.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

He has not only passed Quanzhou's traditional building craftsmanship on to the next generation of transmitters but also founded three major transmission bases, training more than a hundred skilled workers each year. He was rated an outstanding figure in the cause of Chinese ethnic architecture by the industry association in this field.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Jiang Qinquan · National Representative Bearer Archive