Apart from the metropolitan seductions the city of Guangzhou has to offer, there is also a historical side worth visiting. There are cultural relics scattered in the city that are now made into museums open to the public. I made the effort to visit the Chen Clan Academy to see the results of the restoration effort from a few years back.
It is so easy to get here. There is a stop off Line 1 on the Guangzhou Metro named Chen Clan Academy. Not much has changed since back then. It looked smaller than how I remembered it. You get a close look at Chinese architecture. This was mainly a temple used back in the day to worship ancestors for the Chen family lineage hence its other name the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall. Today it is open to the public as a museum to view the large collection of Cantonese art. It now also houses the Guangdong Folk Art Museum.
The collection of art is rich as it contains arts from various mediums. When you view the temple from the outside, you see the architecture and the glazed pottery used to decorate the rooftops. As you venture closer, you see engravings and carvings on wooden doors of calligraphy and nature scenes. Themes are mostly mythical, auspicious creatures or stories about the gods.
The Guangdong Folk Art Museum is a new addition to the ancestral hall and in my unadulterated opinion, the largest gift shop of the museum. While it is under the guise of a museum, nearly every piece on display to view is for sale. To me, it's a great insult considering that pieces at a museum are meant to be kept there to be viewed and learned from, but clearly these pieces on view were produced only to be sold. Only a portion of the pieces on display are historical relics that is under the property of the Chen Clan Academy, such as the ivory carvings from previous dynasties.
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| Based off of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", a Song dynasty painting. |
They managed to hire live artists to open shop at the Chen Clan Academy to showcase the different kinds of arts. There's still a guy creating scenic paintings using black ink and his hands as the "brush". I bought a painting from here nearly a decade ago for 80 RMB (11.94 USD) and thought it was super pricy back then. Today when I come to ask for his prices, the artists responds, '150 RMB (22.39 USD) for the large ones and 30 RMB (4.48 USD) for bookmarks'. Man, they really jacked up the prices.
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| One of the gardens where many people come to do photoshoots. |
Another artist sits by the wall painting on a fan. His table has fans with calligraphy and/or images. There are unframed paintings hanging on a rack for sale for nearly any subject matter. I purchased a pendant from a nei hua artist for 58 RMB (8.66 USD). That's as far as I will pay for decorative art. I remember on my trip to Shanghai they sold extremely elaborate and highly expensive nei hua pieces. The artists here worked on less elaborate pieces focusing on smaller vessels. Nonetheless, it was quite beautiful and wonderfully painted. Other souvenirs around the shopping area were clay figurines selling for 150 RMB and laser cut wooden key chains that had nothing to do with Chinese art in general.
I won't be visiting the Chen Clan Academy on my next visit. It is nice if you are visiting for the first time though. A larger version of the Chen Clan Academy would be the Ancestral Temple in Foshan which you will have to travel further by metro. You can marvel more at the Ancestral Temple than the Chen Clan Academy purely for its size.
Join me next time on another find in Guangzhou. Could it possibly be ... ancient ruins under a shopping mall?
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Places Visited
Chen Clan Academy 陈家祠
中山七路恩龙里34号, 广州市，荔湾区，广东省，中国，510000
34 Enlongli, ZhongShan Qi Lu, Guangzhou Shi, Liwan Qu, Guangdong Sheng, China, 510000
Take Line 1 to the Chen Clan Academy 陈家祠 and exit via Exit D 陈家祠正门.
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