Jìxī

Jixi was one of the mountain counties of Huizhou, and the village of Longchuan provides a particularly concrete record of its links between lineage and official service. The Hu family produced Hu Fu, who passed the metropolitan examinations in 1478 and became minister of revenue at Nanjing, and Hu Zongxian, who passed in 1538 and became minister of war.

The Yishi Shangshu archway was erected in 1562 to commemorate these two ministers, whose examination successes were separated by sixty years. Its stone construction imitates timber architecture, with four pillars, three openings and five roofs. Across the stream stood the Hu ancestral hall, a place for ancestor worship and decisions concerning lineage affairs. These monuments joined public recognition of imperial office to the organisation of the village itself. They give Jixi's Ming history a local form: careers pursued far from home were remembered and made visible through buildings beside Longchuan's watercourse.