The Dingcun Old Residence
 The Private Residences of Dingcun Village are the residential houses with the styles of typical Ming (1368AD-1644AD) and Qing (1644AD-1911AD) Dynasties in Dingcun village, Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province. Located on the bank of Fenhe River, the village is about four kilometers from the urban area of the county. There are now 33 courtyards containing 498 rooms, covering most parts of the village. Dingcun village still keeps the original layout from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The designs of different courtyards are quite different from each other, and there are also various sculptures here. On most of the architectures, there are inscriptions about the construction time of the buildings as well as the artisans' names. As a result, these houses are very important materials for experts to learn more detailed information about the private residential layout and architectural forms in the rural areas in northern part of China. In the year 1998 they were listed as state-level cultural relics.
Dingcun village has been inhabited by the Ding family people for quite a long time, hence the name. According to the research of experts, the oldest residential houses here were built in the 15th century in the Ming Dynasty and the youngest ones were built in the 1920s and 1930s. These houses covered a history of nearly four hundred years. More than forty of them have been listed under state-level protection. All these courtyards were built facing either the northeast or southwest and they could be divided into four groups, such as the northern group, the middle group, the southern group and the western group. Because of the long history of the Ding families, the different features of their houses built in different times could be easily distinguished. The four groups of houses are distributed around Guanyin Temple, which is in the center of the village. With the main street as the central axis, these houses were built generally on the north, south or west of this street. These residential houses have been constructed in reasonable layouts and exquisite architectural styles, with numerous straight or winding alleys. Different courtyards are connected with each other very smartly. The architectures of the northern group were mainly built in the Ming Dynasty, and in the middle part there are mostly Qing Dynasty buildings constructed during the reigns of Emperor Yongzheng and Emperor Qianlong in the eighteenth century. The southern group and the southwestern group of houses were all constructed in the later Qing Dynasty. The most prominent feature of these architectures is that they have been all abundantly decorated. Wood, stone and brick sculptures could be observed all over the different parts of these houses, especially the wood carvings, they could be seen almost everywhere. The sculptures have been made in various styles and designs. For example, there are over sixty different patterns of wood sculptures on the windows and more than fifty patterns of sculptures on the columns.
 Among the 40 private residential houses existing now, many of them are Siheyuan. Private houses of Ming dynasty arranged the gate at the southeast corner. These buildings are usually lower with over hanging gable roof and gentle tiles. The materials are bulky and the eaves and lintels are drawn with colours. The woodcarvings are fewer but simple and unsophisticated. The distribution of the whole buildings is in order and the courtyards are not only spacious and comfortable but artistic and pleasing to the eye. Buildings built in the early or mid periods of the Qin Dynasty adopted the shape of ‘日', the middle hall separates the front and back yards and the gate is designed on the axis. The yard is long and narrow and the small yard is deeper. Compared with the buildings in Ming dynasty, they are taller and the materials are used more carefully. The roofs are usually steep, many of which are flush gable roofs. The constructing of the middle hall is stressed and it can be used to go through from the front yard to the back yard. The north hall adopts the style of attic with two or three stories. The layouts of the private houses in the late Qing dynasty tend to be complex. The gate is designed more freely according to the local conditions. The materials standard is clearly higher than before. The north hall has two spacious attics, with the porch post up to the eaves. The downstairs and upstairs are all decorated with beautiful lattice. The woodcarvings in this period become fewer. The wing-rooms of the private houses in Dingcun have three sections divided into two rooms. Against the gable heated kang is built. All the wing-rooms are buildings like attic-the upstairs are used as a storeroom and the upstairs are used for living. There is a square mouth between the gable and the front wall corner and a hanging ladder is used by to go up or down the stairs. The hall is larger and the roof beam links up the main ridge, the short pillar and the fork to make it a triangle stable structure. The bottom of the short pillar is connected with the middle part of the main ridge. It is different from the structure of both in Ming dynasty when there are Heta in between and in Qing dynasty when there is camel back to sustain. One kind of the hall is high up to the roof and gives people a feeling of tall and splendour; the other kind is like an attic with the front threshold a dividing line and a layer of board divides the hall into two parts, the upper part is a storeroom. The entire roof is covered with tube-shaped tiles and the mouth of the eaves is designed for water dropping. And there is "Feizi" to sustain. The main ridge is designed on the roof and on both sides of the roof is hanging ridges. The halls in the private residential houses of Dingcun, which were built both in Ming & Qing dynasties, are never used for people to live. The main purpose is to provide places for worship or be used as a storeroom. When there are weddings and funerals, they are places to receive guests. It is absolute different from other places where people have the customs of living in the north house. It is one of the unique local features.
As far as the art of the building is concerned, the characteristics of the private residential houses in Dingcun are evident with flower-decorated eaves, the Queti, the brackets and the ridge beam in the hall, which are striven for perfection painstakingly. The coloured drawings on the buildings of Ming Dynasty use gray, white, blue and yellow as the basic colours to draw patterns like twining lotus, chrysanthemum, flowers, birds and the veined back of tortoise. The carvings of the brackets are such simple pictures as "sea horse and floating clouds (haimaliuyun)", "the water buffalo (which dreads the heat of summer) panting at the sight of the moon (mistaking it for the sun)","the magpie playing with the plum". The way of carving which is bold, unconstrained, primitive and crude is vivid, simple and skilful. During the early and mid-periods of Qing dynasty, all the decorations on the buildings are expressed by wood carvings which reached the detached level and the products are exquisitely carved and show forth among the ridge beams. The craftsmen create these new products such as "happiness, official salary and granting titles and territories to the nobles", "lute-playing, chess, calligraphy, and the painting", "fishermen, woodmen, farmers and scholars", "Three yang begins prosperity-the new year ushers in a renewal and a change of fortune", "the snipe and the clam grapple" and so on to reflect the ideas of the ancient Chinese Confucianism and lucky implications. Particularly, the No.1 yard built in the 54th year of Qianlong has the "Ningwu Strategic Pass", "Yuefei's mother tattoos", "Zhou ren presents his sister-in-law" carved on the board of the middle yard to reflect the contents of loyalty and filial piety. "Riding a bamboo stick as a toy horse", "flying kite", " Tiger dancing", "big head child", "Si maguang breaks the vat to save the drowning little child" are carved on the board of the corridor to show the contents of the folk entertainment. These woodcarvings are the representatives among the woodcarvings in the private residential houses in Dingcun and no other woodcarvings on the private buildings can match them. The stone art in Dingcun's private houses is also important. All the plinths, hammering blocks at the door and the feet stamping stones are deliberately decorated to reach the agreement of the practical use and the beauty of the art with rich contents and unique styles. The stone art in Ming dynasty is small and short, the carving is elaborate; while in Qing dynasty, it becomes bold and unstrained and big with the contents of "money and peach", "pine, bamboo, plum and orchid", " horse, deer", " monkey owns the money (monkey has the same pronunciation with many times)", "Spring arrives at the yard", "the cat springs on the picture of the butterfly", "the picture of nine deer", "five bats hold good fortune and long life (the pronunciation of bat is the same with happiness)". 
In these residential houses, most of the furniture is of the Ming Dynasty style, however only a few of them were made in the Ming Dynasty, most of others were actually made in the Qing Dynasty, but in a Ming style. Just like the houses, many pieces of the furniture are still used by the villagers today.
Because of their long history, exquisite construction, and various architectural designs, the residential houses in Dingcun village are of high historical, cultural and scientific values. The layout and designs of the buildings not only make them look elegant, but also satisfy the practical use of inhabitation. They have vividly reflected the customs, hobbies, religious beliefs, and traditions of the Han Nationality Chinese living in the southern part of Shanxi Province. They are precious materials for scholars to study the traditional Chinese architectural customs. Architecturally speaking, the villagers in the Dingcun village have combined the merits of different architectural forms, and make their own houses as practical and beautiful as possible. The sculptures on the buildings could vividly reflect the local people's life, including their rituals, operas, assemblies, folk customs, and family education. As a result, they are considered to be precious living fossils of ancient Chinese folk custom
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