Luo was a famous scholar at the end of Song Dynasty and the beginning of Yuan Dynasty. At that time, people thought that he had Huang Tingjian's talent and Ouyang Xiu's virtue, and he was highly praised. Luo has never been an official, but only worked as a farmer in his hometown. After his death, many descendants got ahead. During the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the descendants of Roche began to build ancestral temples for Luo. A few years later, a beautiful courtyard with four entrances was finally built. Among them, the last main room to enter the courtyard is called the "back bedroom", which is dedicated to ancestral tablets and is the most important place in the whole ancestral hall.
However, just as the "top priority" of this building was about to be completed, the whole ancestral hall suddenly stopped working, and it was 70 years since it stopped. Why is this? It turned out that the descendants of Roche devoted themselves to building ancestral halls in order to show the virtues of their ancestors. The back bedroom of the ancestral hall is large, with a 1 1 bay, which is out of line in folk architecture. The painting of the nine bays in the middle is bright yellow for the emperor.
What's more, the "sparrow replacement" in the center of the Hall of Great Heroes connecting the beams should have been carved into the shape of "a fish spits water", but the fish head was carved into a faucet in the hall. These are all "trespassing" in traditional society, which exceeds the treatment that ordinary people should enjoy. In order to avoid unexpected troubles, Roche people had to temporarily stop this project. Until Wanli, Luo He Yingcai, a descendant of Roche, continued to build.
The ancestral hall has been built for nearly a hundred years. So, how did Luo solve the problem of "trespassing" in architecture? Luodongshu Temple covers an area of 3,300 square meters. Looking from the main entrance in front of the temple, the magnificent courtyard is gradually rising from Lingxing Gate to the main entrance, lobby and sleeping hall, with magnificent momentum. When you enter, you will find an attic above the back bedroom hall.
Ancestors occupy the highest position in ancestral halls, and it is neither fish nor fowl to build attics on temples dedicated to ancestral tablets in traditional society. Why is this? It turns out that when the descendants of Roche first built the ancestral hall, it was built very high, and the bedtime hall was as high as 13.6 meters.
Seventy years later, when Luo rebuilt the back bedroom, he not only wanted to highlight the highest position of the back bedroom, but also wanted to express his humility as a courtier, so he added a pavilion on the back bedroom, named "Baolunge", which was specially used to collect royal gifts such as imperial letters and official letters to reflect the concept of loyalty to the monarch. Today, this sleeping hall is the most exquisite part of the whole ancestral hall, with exquisite structure, exquisite carving and beautiful scenery, which can be called a boutique.
Summary: Another feature of the ancestral temple is that there is actually a female shrine called Zenei. It was built on the right side of the ancestral temple, belonging to an inconspicuous position, with an area of less than one tenth of that of the public temple; Moreover, when the descendants of Roche enter the temple, men have to pay eight taels of silver as incense money every year, and women have to pay twelve taels of silver when entering the temple.
Nevertheless, in the feudal society where men are superior to women and women are not enshrined in ancestral temples, it is still commendable that Luodongshu Temple can make an exception and build a female shrine.