Under the warm winter sun, the literary and artistic rebirth of the century-old Ancestral Hall Street

Ancestral Hall Street is located in Qingyang District, Chengdu City. It is connected to Xiyu Street in the east and Shudu Avenue in the west. It is adjacent to Tianfu Square and is across the street from People’s Park. It occupies a firm C position in terms of geographical location. More than 300 years ago, the Eight Banners garrison of the Qing Dynasty built a ancestral temple here for Nian Gengyao, the governor of Sichuan. Since then, the street has been named "Ancestral Hall Street". Ancestral Hall Street was once one of the cultural centers of Chengdu. During the Republic of China period, Ancestral Hall Street was a place where advanced ideas converged and debated, and various bookstores that gathered cultural content and avant-garde ideas were born here, such as Life Bookstore, Kaiming Bookstore, Commercial Press, Beixin Bookstore, Oriental Bookstore, Dadong Bookstore, Zhengzhong Bookstore, Guangyi Bookstore, etc. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Ancestral Hall Street became a concentration of wartime publishing houses, including the "Da Sheng" weekly hosted by Che Yaoxian, the "Xingmang" weekly edited by Hu Jiwei and Xiong Fu, the Chengdu Student Union's official publication "Wartime Student Weekly" and many other progressive publications. Among them, the Xinhua Daily Chengdu Office, located here, became a beacon that illuminated the hearts of the Sichuan people during the war. At that time, the Sichuan Art Association also settled in Ancestral Hall Street and accepted many celebrities and scholars who moved from the interior. Zhang Daqian, Xu Beihong, Wu Zuoren and others had held exhibitions here. After the founding of New China, cinemas, photo studios, stationery stores, printing shops, musical instrument factory outlets and other stores emerged on Ancestral Hall Street, making it a cultural consumption destination in the city center. At the same time, there are also Chengdu’s time-honored restaurants such as "Nuli Can" and "Laoma Tihua" on the street. In order to preserve the city’s memory and inherit its centuries-old cultural context, the Chengdu Municipal Government officially launched the urban organic renewal project in 2019. Since then, Ancestral Hall Street has transformed into Chengdu’s first art community - Ancestral Hall Street Art Community. The project follows the principle of restoring the old as it was, revitalizing and utilizing century-old buildings, preserving the century-old street layout, and restoring the architectural style with western Sichuan dwellings as the main body and a combination of Chinese and Western buildings as the supplement. At the same time, the 38 iconic plane trees on the street were completely preserved, and were accompanied by Sichuan-style bonsai micro-landscapes. While insisting on introducing the first store, the company will also retain time-honored brands such as Lao Ma Ti Hua to "preserve the taste memories of childhood." Ancestral Hall Street is a place where fashion and the atmosphere of everyday life coexist. Tourists and citizens can sit under the sycamore trees and elegantly sip coffee, or feast on pig’s trotters. Here, you can visit exhibitions, drink coffee, and shop for your favorite cultural and creative products or art derivatives. You can spend a whole day here leisurely and comfortably, feeling the charm of ancient architecture and trendy art.