Four Wings, Five Courtyards: A House in Lijiang

A local account identifies Hengyugong Residence Museum in Dayan’s Wensheng Lane as a protected historic house displaying the form called Four Wings and Five Courtyards. The name counts a central courtyard and four smaller corner light wells within a compound enclosed by four building ranges. A wing can contain several rooms; the term does not mean a house with only four rooms.

This arrangement makes the spaces between buildings as important as the buildings themselves. The main court provides a shared centre, while the smaller courts bring openings into the corners of the compound. Seen as a plan, the house becomes a relationship between enclosed rooms and open sky, with different scales of light and movement.

UNESCO’s account describes Lijiang’s timber-framed, tile-roofed houses as part of a town adapted to uneven ground. The nomination records several compound patterns. Hengyugong therefore offers a particular example within a varied architectural tradition, rather than a plan shared by every Naxi home.

The courtyard also belongs to the larger town: a doorway meets a lane, and the lane joins the network of streets, canals and bridges. A named residence lets the broad heritage description become concrete. Its plan explains one set of spatial choices, while its museum role gives that domestic architecture a later public life.