Located in Huiwen Town, Wenchang City, Shibahang Village is recognized as a ‘National Famous Historical and Cultural Village”. It’s the largest ancient village in Hainan featuring Ming and Qing Dynasty structures.

The people of Shibahang Village have always been bold and hardworking. In the late Qing and early Republic of China eras, some residents traveled across the sea for work. Nearly every family has relatives living overseas.

Eighteen rows of courtyard homes fan out across Shibahang Village, each row containing six or seven households. The village’s unique form embodies the motto “Brothers stand together, neighbors don’t quarrel”. The concentric layout means that every home is positioned on the central axis of the row, and the homes in each row are the same height, showing that the neighbors are all equal.

This is not an ordinary village. Each row of houses is occupied by brothers who share common ancestry. The main hall doors all open along a central axis, leaving a clear passage from the first through to the last house. These endless corridors let you look through six hundred years of history.

From the Ming Dynasty immigrants from south Fujian who cleared the land to the young men of the Qing Dynasty who sailed to Southeast Asia, every brick in Shibahang Village tells of the bravery of these ancient seafarers.

Pushing open the carved wooden door of ‘Jiumu Hall’, you’ll feel a Ming Dynasty breeze caressing your face. The wooden carvings in the hall bear the marks of the knives of south Fujian. Auspicious stone beasts sculpted by Ming and Qing craftsmen line the roof ridges, and the colorful walls feature flower and bird murals painted with powdered shell pigments.

“Brothers stand together, neighbors don’t quarrel” — this ancestral motto is engraved on every stepping stone. Even if a wealthy man returns from Southeast Asia, his roof can never rise half an inch above his neighbor’s! Facing each other means brothers stand together, and uniform heights mean that all are equal.

The real architectural miracles have never been the magnificence of the structures, but are instead the support of generation after generation, and loving concern for both family and hometown.