Huguang Guild Hall

The Huguang Guild Hall stands on the slope above the Yangtze by the Dongshuimen gate and remains the largest surviving complex of guild courtyards in China. It was built by people from the provinces of Hubei and Hunan in the Qing era, when after wars and epidemics the authorities were resettling hundreds of thousands of families in a depopulated Sichuan. Behind ochre walls hide several courtyards with theatre stages, assembly halls and a temple of Yuwang, decorated with wood carving and stone reliefs. After a restoration in the middle of the 2000s the complex opened as a museum of that migration, where the story of the movement known as Huguang fills Sichuan is told. From above it is easy to see how the tiled roofs and yellow walls are squeezed between the river and the new blocks of Yuzhong.

On the map