Guild Hall - Traditional Architecture of Qing Merchants

    In the feudal society of China, which lasted for over two thousand years, successive rulers have always conveyed the concept of "emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce". Until the Ming and Qing dynasties, the status of merchants had a certain improvement. After gaining a certain social status, they had to maintain their common interests, minimize competition in their own industry, and monopolize the circulation of goods in their own industry to obtain maximum profits. Due to the differences in regional culture, language and living customs, businessmen of the same nationality who live in different places will organize and build guild halls and Kongsi according to class, industry and place of origin according to the same goal.

    Zigong Salt History Museum, this guild hall is arranged with main buildings on the central axis, surrounded by corridor walls and other buildings, forming a group of five deep and layered courtyards. There are hundreds of exquisite wood carvings, stone carvings, color paintings and clay sculptures in the Zigong Salt History Museum, which are valuable material materials for studying social life, opera, song and dance, religious art and other aspects of the Qing Dynasty. The well salt management contracts and accounting books collected by the library have important academic value.

    The building plan of Zigong Salt History Museum is rectangular, which is in the form of traditional Chinese architecture and covers a total area of about 3640 square meters. The building has a clear axis, facing southeast to northwest, surrounded by secondary buildings such as gables, pavilions, and corridors. On the axis of the 86-meter building, from the outside to the inside, there are the main gates of the Wusheng Palace, the performance towers, the Baoting Hall, the Fuhai Tower, the towering pavilion, the central hall, and the main hall buildings. On both sides of the axis, from the outside to the inside, there are buildings such as the inner courtyard and guest rooms.