Wei Yuan
2022-05-22
Against a background of Eight-Power Allied Forces and other colonialist powers’ invasion of China, Wei proposed that the Chinese should learn the advanced technology from the West so as to be strong enough to fight against those invaders. His opinion opened up a new trend of learning from the West, which symbolized the thought shift of China to modern times.
Wei Yuan’s Former Residence, located in Longhui County, Shaoyang City, Hunan Province, is a quadrangle courtyard with wooden structure. There is a wooden gate in the front of the residence that is an independent courtyard surrounded by adobe walls.
The residence was built in 1736 in the Qing Dynasty. It has two principal rooms and one left wing-room, all of which are bungalows built with Chinese-style tile. They all measure five rooms wide and two rooms long. The right wing-room has two stories, measuring seven rooms wide and four rooms long. Specifically, on the first floor, the five rooms are all barns ranked by stairs at both ends. On the second floor, the three rooms in the middle are the lecture halls and the other two at ends are the studies, all of which are for reading and learning. It was in this building that Wei Yuan spent his childhood and adolescence.
Wei Yuan’s Former Residence was announced as a cultural relic unit under provincial-level protection in 1983 and included in the first batch of patriotism education bases in 1995. In November 1996, it was rated as a cultural relic unit under national-level protection .
