Yiyuan Garden

Built in 1895, Yiyuan Garden, also known as the Former Residence of Lin Henian, is a villa building consisting of the gate, walls and Western-style main building and annex building. It is the earliest Western-style building built by overseas Chinese in South Fujian. The main building is a three-story Western-style building built with red bricks with a story being underground damp-proof. The annex building, aligned northeast-southwest, is also a three-story red-brick building with an area of about 253 square meters. Situated on a high damp-proof layer, the building reflects the colonial veranda style with veranda space both in the front and the back built with bricks and wood. On the other hand, the building also shows elements of local traditional architecture using the red bricks with South Fujian characteristics to build walls through the traditional caulked technique. The veranda space adopts the building type of the local red brick house and the plane layout discards that of a colonial veranda building with a veranda as the core. The front part of the building adopts the traditional ""three room"" axial symmetry, reflecting the plane layout of traditional family ethics. Such layout has also been widely adopted by western-style buildings on Kulangsu and in South Fujian at large. The courtyard is also equipped with a ""Xiaotaoyuan"" rock carving of 1826 and a well. Lin Henian (1847-1901), a native of Anxi County in Fujian Province, was one of Fujian Province's eight great poets in the late Qing Dynasty. He was appointed as an official at National History Museum in 1883 and later was sent to take charge of tax collection and railroad construction affairs in Taiwan. In 1892, he was awarded the title of Taotai (magistrate) and surveillance commissioner for his excellent performance. After Taiwan was ceded to Japan, Lin Henian returned to Xiamen to build Yiyuan Garden and settled here.