Two Slabs and a Courtroom at the Nanyang Prefectural Office

Nanyang's Prefectural Office stands on Minzhu Street, an old commercial lane. A tall archway bearing the name Nanyang Prefectural Office introduces a compound of grey brick and grey tile. Behind it, the first gate has three bays, a hard-gabled tiled roof and splayed walls. The second, ceremonial gate marked a threshold of official rank: the local account describes newly appointed prefects dismounting here to be received by officials, and the gate opening fully for imperial decrees or major sacrifices. Beyond it lay the six administrative offices and the main hall.

The main hall, also called the Gonglian Hall, is five bays wide and three deep, with a hard-gabled roof and barrel tiles, raised on a low platform; it is the largest and highest-ranking building in the compound. A warm chamber stands in the centre with the prefect’s desk, and on the floor in front of it lie two stone slabs. The eastern one is for plaintiffs, the western for defendants, and the defendant’s is slightly the larger. Beside them the hall sets out its own punctuation: the desk for the magistrate, and the rods and banners of silence and avoidance. The arrangement was not incidental. Jia Fujun, chief engineer at the Nanyang cultural heritage research institute, notes that the front columns of the central bay were removed to widen the room for hearings, a device common in the Jin and Yuan periods.

What the office does not have is show. Yuan Linjun, director of protection planning and survey at the Henan provincial research institute for historic buildings, explains that official residences were built for use rather than display: hard gables, grey brick and tile, little carving, because the rules of rank constrained them and because repairs had to be paid for out of the office’s own pocket. Rank is nonetheless legible in the eaves: a prefecture was allowed simple brackets and a county was not, which is why the Nanyang office has brackets, small enough to look like packing boards, and the neighbouring county office has none. In the wall beside the splayed gate stand seven steles, one from the Kangxi era recording thanks from the guilds of Shedian and elsewhere to a Nanyang prefect for protecting merchants’ rights.