A village that has produced over 200 lifers and the lanes are divided into men and women! 120

In the famous overseas Chinese township, the town of hot springs, Shengtang Town, Enping City, Guangdong Province, there is a national historical and cultural village full of legends and the most beautiful village in Guangdong Province - Xie Ma Juren Village. This small, unassuming village in the south of the country was founded in the Zhizheng period of the Yuan Dynasty, and in its 670 years of history, the village has actually produced more than 670 people of merit, including 285 people who have attained the title of Juren or above, more than 280 officials of the ninth to the second rank, and five officials of the second rank.
In the modern era, there have also been many talented people, and in the decades around 1949, more than 200 university students were trained, many of whom became national elites. He was a member of the Flying Tigers of the United States Air Force during the War of Resistance against Japan and served as Captain No. 1 of the United States Air Force during the "ice-breaking trip" to establish diplomatic relations between China and the United States in 1972, flying President Nixon on his first visit to China. Liang Zuo was the star of public virtue in Wuyi. For more than 670 years, this small village has been blessed with a wealth of talent, and here's why.

The village was named after its resemblance to a standing horse, with its "horse head", "horsetail", "horse belly" and "horse bone". "These two stones by the pond are the symbol of the village, but do you know which part of the horse they represent? The answer is revealed at the end of the article.

Xie Ma Village, Sheng Tang Town, Enping City, has been a famous village in the hearts of the people of Enping since ancient times. In the Wuyi area, there is also the saying "Enping Xie Ma Liang, Kaiping Shagang Zhang", and today it has become a national historical and cultural village.

Xie Ma is famous in Enping and even in Wuyi because of its feng shui pattern of "water in but no water out", but also because it is the first village of the Imperial Scholar, a famous feng shui village, a village of education and culture, a village of merit and monuments, a green ecological village, a healthy and long-lived village, an overseas Chinese folk village, a national civilised village and a village of Chinese history and culture.

After passing through the pagoda, there is an inspirational garden ahead on the left, with ancient trees and lush foliage, and the emphasis on education is interspersed in the corners of Ximena Village.

There are several large trees at the head of the village, under which the villagers sit in the cool.

A famous village in the south of the country must have mountains and water. The Jinjiang River runs in front of the village of Ximena, and from a feng shui point of view, "Xiema has nine curves of water in front of it and three mountains at the back".

Most of the well-preserved ancient villages in the south of the country have a large water pond, which is an important element in feng shui and regulating the natural environment.

The village is built around the pond, which is surrounded by a wide road so that cars can walk around it, and the village people hold their red and white banquets around it.

Under an ancient longan tree, known as the "teach your son" platform, the strict requirements of one generation to the next to have led to the legend of the Shima village.

The statue of Confucius is prominently displayed. The village of Xie Ma owes its fame to education, and it is a village tradition to respect teachers.

The flagpole clip is a symbol of academic merit. The village of Xie Ma stipulates that only scholars and scholars of the third rank or above are eligible to erect a monument and erect a flag, and the flagpole has a bucket on it, meaning that it is eight buckets high.

The eight flagpoles were erected for eight people, including Liang Tiexian, a scholar of the late Ming Dynasty, and Liang Zibin, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, both to honour their ancestors and to inspire future generations.

In addition to the literati who achieved distinction, the village also has many martial artists and martyred women such as Liang Shengzu, a woman from the Ming Dynasty who fell into the hands of bandits to cover the evacuation of the village and was killed by them.

There are still a few old houses in the village with the Cultural Revolution slogans painted on them.

The village has seven ancestral halls, more than 200 stone monuments of the scholarship, stone monuments of the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and eight flagpole clips, all of which document the glory of the "Scholar Village".

The ancestral hall is the best-preserved building in the village, and like most ancient villages in the south of the country, it is where the roots of a village clan were built.

A place with culture is different, and the village has been awarded the title of civilised village year after year.

The most prominent official in the village was Liang Yuangui, who became a scholar in the Qing Dynasty in 1846 and a bachelor of the Imperial Household Department in 1852.

What is remarkable is that of the 107 male members of Liang Yuan Gui's family in the four generations since his grandfather, Liang Yingfu, a total of 81 were successful in the imperial examinations, of whom 70 were successful in the imperial examinations, 51 served in the court and four were second-ranking officials, which is a miracle for a family.

You may wonder why the people of Xie Ma Village are so intelligent and able to produce so many talented people, and whether it has anything to do with the local feng shui or food.

In fact, the key to the talent in Xie Ma is not intelligence or feng shui, but the "scholarship system", which is, to put it bluntly, a scholarship system with clear rewards and punishments, and the respect for teachers and learning, with the clansmen motivating each other, it is not surprising that so many successful people have emerged in a small area over a long period of time.

The plaque of imperial grace hangs high above the village of Xie Ma, which produced so many feudal officials and was once a place with a very strong sense of feudalism.

The murals in the ancestral hall are also very distinctive, with the 'Full Gate of Poets', all subliminally educating future generations.

The most strongly feudalised part of the village is the Women's Alley, where there is a distinction between men and women. 13 large alleys are for men to enter and leave, known as the Men's Alley, while 14 small alleys are for women to relax and chat, and men are not allowed to enter, known as the Women's Alley.

The women's alley is narrow, only 60cm at its narrowest point and only 1m at its widest, and is also divided into male and female, a rarity in China.
The two rocks are behind the "horse's tail", a male horse, so the two rocks also represent the male root of the horse's testicles. Every historical and cultural village is an ancient village with a story written all over it, and the village of Sheema is full of talented people.
It is a pity that nowadays, the continuous concentration of resources in the big cities has led to the gradual decline of villages and even counties.