{"id":70,"date":"2010-05-06T13:06:59","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T17:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tobeycat.com\/ub\/?p=70"},"modified":"2010-05-18T14:19:33","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T18:19:33","slug":"the-mandarin%e2%80%99s-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"The Mandarin\u2019s House"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Chan Chi Wang<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Mandarin\u2019s House (Zheng\u2019s Family House), after an eight-year reconstruction, was reopened on February 5 this year. This renewed building, which is one of the World Heritages in Macao, has attracted many visitors to come and see its graceful bearings.<\/p>\n

The Mandarin\u2019s House was built in around 1867, during the Qing Dynasty. It was the ancestral home of an eminent intellectual figure in the late Qing Dynasty, Zheng Guanying, where he wrote his masterpiece Shengshi Weiyan (Words of Warning in Times of Prosperity). It was first constructed by his father Zheng Wenrui and later expanded by his brothers. It was, and still is the largest private residence in Macao, covering nearly 4000 square meters.<\/p>\n

Due to the decadence of the Zheng\u2019s family, the house lacked maintenance. It experienced several fires, which resulted in disfigurements of some parts of the structure. Over four-fifth of the house was damaged and was therefore closed by the Macao government eight years ago. The Cultural Institution of Macao was assigned the restoration project of the House. Experts were invited to Macao to assist in the restoration of the architecture. Fortunately, most of the original features of the house were resumed within the eight years.<\/p>\n

The reconstruction of the Mandarin\u2019s House in post-80s\u2019 eyes<\/p>\n

Macao was designated the World Heritage site in 2005 which is a great honor to this city. As one of the heritages in Macao, the Zheng\u2019s Family House started to be recognized by some of the post-80s.<\/p>\n

It was a big issue that the government has taken eight years to reconstruct the House. There are varied feedbacks from different groups. \u201cThe Macao government does not have much experience in reconstructing heritage buildings. Consultation from experts is needed, it can be understood that it took such a long time,\u201d said Kuok Mio U, a civil servant working for the Cultural Institution of Macao.<\/p>\n

However, there are still many critical voices from other post-80s people in Macao. A graduate, Leong, majoring in heritage management, who is also one of the heritage ambassadors of Macao, said that the government did not give enough openness about the reconstruction. \u201cI have participated in the reconstruction. I can see there were so few young people who knew what was happening.\u201d He also mentioned that the government has made the heritage sites very commercial, but neglected to promote them with education. He hopes that the government can put more resources and figure out more effective strategies on promoting Macao\u2019s heritage.<\/p>\n

There are many post-80s youngsters who are interested in the heritages. \u201cThere are no full courses about the heritages. Most of them are simple introductions,\u201d a post-80s student said. It is hoped that the government should consider enhancing the education about Macao\u2019s heritage such as inviting experts to give special talks in schools, with the history of Macao\u2019s heritages as one of the academic topics. They are valuable treasures of this city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Chan Chi Wang The Mandarin\u2019s House (Zheng\u2019s Family House), after an eight-year reconstruction, was reopened on February 5 this year. This renewed building, which is one of the World Heritages in Macao, has attracted many visitors to come and see its graceful bearings. The Mandarin\u2019s House was built in around 1867, during the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":340,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wancatcat.com\/ub\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}