Xinpu Pan Family House, Heritage house in Xinpu, Taiwan.
The Xinpu Pan Family House is a single-storey Hakka sanheyuan: one main hall of three bays with four side wings, enclosed by two ring walls. The outer wall has a stone-pillared gate and brick lattice windows; the inner wall has a stone-and-brick gate with a tiled hood. Granite slabs face the entrance, and the central door carries the inscription "孝友傳家".
In 1786 Pan Shuxian moved from Guangdong to Taiwan and later settled in Xinpu, where he ran the Jinhe trading firm. In 1815 he bought land on the north slope of the Fengshan River valley and built a house of earth mixed with straw, the core of today's building. In 1861 his descendants Pan Qinghan and Pan Chenghan rebuilt it with red brick and granite, hiding 13 gun ports in the plaster walls.
The central gate bears the inscription "孝友傳家" (Passing Down Filial Piety and Friendship), flanked by a couplet on the same theme, because Pan Qinghan and his father Pan Rongguang were each honoured with this title during the Jiaqing era. Inside the main hall hangs a "貢元" plaque erected in 1861 by Pan Rongguang, son of the founder Pan Shuxian. The hall still holds the family's ancestral tablets.
The house stands on Heping Street in central Xinpu, its front courtyard reduced by the street laid out before it. The 2021 restoration finished after more than two years of work; the plan is to open it for visits, with family objects shown in the inner side wings and food and craft stalls planned for the outer wings.
The inner courtyard wall is built of stone on the outside and brick within, topped by a single-bay gate with a tiled hip-and-gable canopy and cut-and-paste figures on its ridge. The gate face is set with large granite slabs, and the central door carries the inscription "孝友傳家" (Handing Down Filial Piety and Friendship), flanked by a couplet and a plaster "福星拱照" plaque.
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