Huizhou Three Carvings

The Huizhou Three Carvings is the collective name for the brick, stone and wood carving of Huizhou architecture, which flourished with the rise of the Huizhou merchants in the Ming and Qing and became the foremost decorative art of Huizhou dwellings, ancestral halls and archways. It entered the first national ICH list in 2006.

Brick carving, worked on Huizhou grey brick, adorns gate-towers and portals in up to seven or eight layers from shallow relief to openwork; stone carving marks archways, pillar bases and balustrades, heavy and formal; wood carving dresses beams, windows and brackets with opera scenes, flowers, birds and antiquarian motifs, intricate as paper-cut, the finest details near too thin to bear touch.

The Three Carvings are the soul of Huizhou architecture, carrying the merchants' outlook on wealth, ethics and beauty, embodying the highest level of Ming and Qing folk carving, and forming a key subject for the study of Chinese traditional architecture and decorative art.