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Yan Xishan Former Residence

2023-10-25
886-2-28626853
Yan Xishan (1883-1960), with the courtesy name Bozichuan, experienced almost all of China's major modern historical events, including the anti-Qing movement of the Tongmenghui, the Xinhai Revolution, the Hongxian Emperor's imperial system, the establishment of the Republic of China, the Zhongyuan War, the cooperation between the Nationalists and the Communists, the Anti-Japanese War, and the Chinese Civil War, until the Kuomintang's relocation to Taiwan. He was one of the most important figures in modern Chinese history. He served as the Premier of the National Government and Minister of National Defense before the relocation to Taiwan. After retiring, he led his subordinates to live in seclusion on Yangming Mountain. During his last decade of seclusion, he focused on researching and writing, completing "The Great Harmony of the World" and "Three Hundred Years of China". He was a Confucian scholar who achieved the three immortals of virtue, merit, and words. In his later years, due to his nostalgia for his hometown and the need for military defense, he chose to build stone houses, "Zhongnengdong" and "Red Brick House", on the windy mountain slope overlooking the Danshui River estuary and the Taipei Basin. "Zhongnengdong" was built in the style of Shanxi cave dwellings, incorporating the characteristics of Chinese, Japanese, and Western architectural styles. The building's age, scale, and layout are significantly different from those of general historical sites. It is the main building of Yan's former residence, personally named by Yan, reflecting his "cosmology" of observing the changes in the universe through "zhongneng". This fortress-like residence became the final resting place of this important modern historical figure. The "Red Brick House" was used as an air raid shelter, with a three-foot-thick outer wall, reinforced steel plates on doors and windows, and designs for camouflage sheds and sentry lookout posts. "Red Brick House" and "Zhongnengdong" were designated as municipally protected historic sites, "Yan Xishan Former Residence", in 2004. The nearby Yan Xishan Tomb was also designated as a historic site in 2010.
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