Chang Family Manor Travel Guide

Chang Family Manor is the largest Shanxi ancient merchant messuage and the largest manor style architecture in China. 

Chang Family Manor now cover an area of more than 120000 square meters, is composed of castle gates, castle wall, streets, courtyards group, gardens, shops, archways, castle pool, castle pool bridge, etc. The shops and shopping streets provide family members with consumer goods, it connect small family courtyards; gardens are located north to the courtyards group, include two main gardens named Jing Garden (Peace Garden) and Shi Garden (Lion Garden), they are the family members' daily leisure places. The manor is first built in 1488-1505 and the heyday was since 1768; in the next 150 years, the manor area was expanding, with more than 5000 rooms, 50 courtyards, 7 gardens, cover and area of 600000 square meters. And except this huge manor, the Chang family has many castles and real estates in Taiyuan. 

Now the main scenic spots you could visit include: 

Chang Family Ancestral Hall 

This ancestral hall is built 1879-1882, use more than twenty thousand taels of silver at the period, the main buildings include the main hall for ancestral tablets, subordinate hall, subordinate room, sacrifice stage, etc. It is the largest existing ancestral hall with the most complete structures, facilities and specifications in northern China. Guihe Hall Guihe Hall is with 73 rooms, is the existing largest hall in Chang Family Manor, with the most preserved brick carving, wood carving, stone carving and color painting. 

Shiyunxuan Academy 

It is the academy of Chang Family, the treasure of the academy is Calligraphy Corridors, the corridors are the calligraphy stone inscriptions, and the calligraphy stone inscriptions are the corridors in the academy. There are four corridors in the academy, and the most famous is "Shiyunxuan calligraphy stone inscriptions". 

Jing Garden (Peace Garden) 

It combined the Yangtze Delta garden and Northern China garden sytles, and the garden is not only for daily leisure, but also has melberry field, orchard and vegetalbe garden.