Four Streets Meet at Tonghai’s Pavilion

Four streets meet beneath the presence of Jukui Pavilion in Tonghai. The building stands at the intersection of the old town’s north, south, east and west streets. It gives the street plan a centre that can be recognised before the names of individual lanes become familiar.

The pavilion is also called Sige Lou locally. Its earlier building was lost to a fire in 1876 and rebuilt on the same site in 1882. The present form therefore carries both continuity of place and a history of rebuilding. Its three levels and projecting eaves remain a point of reference among the lower buildings around it.

Tonghai’s history includes several related urban spaces. Local accounts distinguish the older civilian settlement, the garrison town and Daqiao, associated with the movement of merchants. Trade, residence and defence did not occupy identical places. The surviving street plan belongs to that layered history.

At the smaller scale, compact courtyard houses gather private rooms behind the street frontage. The contrast between the crossing and the courtyard is useful: movement comes together in public, while domestic space turns inward. A town can be read through both arrangements without reducing it to a procession of isolated monuments.

The name Jukui links the pavilion with learning and literary distinction; its upper storey is associated with the figure of Kuixing. The building consequently brings civic ambitions as well as traffic into the centre of town. Words, architecture and the arrangement of streets meet in the same place.

Contemporary conservation also happens at street level. A county report in 2026 describes repairs to timber, tiles and carved details alongside drainage and fire-safety work. These less spectacular changes are part of keeping an old district in use. The landmark is easiest to appreciate when the lanes around it remain a town rather than merely a setting for a photograph.