Nanzhaizi (South Mansion, Tianshui Folk Customs Museum)

The South Mansion, known in Chinese as Nan Zhai Zi, is the southern half of the Hu family Ming-era residence complex on Minzhu West Road in Tianshui's Qin Zhou district, and one of the best-preserved examples of Ming dynasty vernacular architecture in Northwest China. Together with the neighboring North Mansion, it forms a single nationally protected heritage compound that gives foreign visitors rare access to a sixteenth-century official's residence in Gansu.

The compound follows the courtyard-house tradition of northwest China, with deep verandas, screen walls, and graduated rooflines. Carved wooden brackets, lattice panels, and grey-tile roofs combine the more restrained local aesthetic with the formal vocabulary expected of a Ming-era official's home. The floor plan separates reception halls, family quarters, ancestral shrines, and service courtyards, illustrating how a regional elite household was organized across generations.

Today the South Mansion operates as a museum of vernacular architecture and Tianshui-area folk culture. Rooms are furnished to show how a wealthy Ming family slept, cooked, studied, and received guests, while side galleries display furniture, household utensils, embroidery, and wedding artifacts from the broader region. The setting preserves the texture of daily life in a way that single-object museum galleries rarely achieve.

For a self-guided traveler, the South Mansion is an easy addition to a Tianshui walking itinerary and pairs naturally with the Fuxi Temple a few blocks away. Allow roughly an hour for a careful walk through the rooms. Photography is generally welcome. Visitors with an interest in Chinese vernacular architecture will find the South Mansion especially valuable, since comparable Ming-era courtyard houses are scarce in the western provinces.