Tianjin Cantonese Guild Hall

The Tianjin Cantonese Guild Hall (天津广东会馆) was begun on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month of 1907, in the thirty-third year of Guangxu, and stands south of the drum tower at 31 Nanmenli Street in Nankai District. It is the largest and most complete surviving Qing guild hall in Tianjin, built with money raised by the customs commissioner Tang Shaoyi and his fellow Guangdong merchants on the site of the former salt transport commissioner's office, and it joins Lingnan architecture with the northern courtyard style. Its theatre is the main building: the stage is ten metres deep and eleven metres wide under a domed caisson of densely packed rotating dougong, all joined with fine timber members. It is now the Tianjin Drama Museum.