Wénxǐ

Wénxǐ lies in southern Shanxi on the plain north of the Zhongtiao Mountains, and its name means hearing glad news: in 111 BC Emperor Wu of the Han, passing through, learned of his army's victory over Nanyue and named the county after it. The district is the ancestral home of the Pei lineage of Hedong, whose tombs lie on the Phoenix Plateau and whose members held high office for centuries, among them the Tang minister Pei Du, who helped to put down the Huaixi rebellion. Family shrines and inscriptions in the villages kept the memory of these ancestors alive, and other local lineages built ancestral halls of their own in the Ming and Qing.