Xinhui Academy

Xinhui Academy sits within the Three Streets and Two Alleys block in Xingning District and is one of Nanning's few surviving Qing-dynasty guild halls. It was built by merchants originally from Xinhui county in Guangdong province, part of the wave of Cantonese traders who settled along the Yong River in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and organized native-place associations to support fellow merchants, arbitrate trade disputes, and fund charitable works such as schools for guild members' children -- the origin of the academy's name. Architecturally the building follows the southern Chinese guild-hall pattern of a formal entrance gate, a central courtyard, and a raised main hall used for ancestral tablets and communal meetings, built with timber-frame construction, carved beam brackets, and a tiled roof typical of Lingnan guild architecture. The hall fell out of use as a merchant association after the mid-twentieth century and was later absorbed into state ownership, with much of its original timber structure surviving despite decades of non-commercial use. As part of the Three Streets and Two Alleys restoration, Xinhui Academy was repaired and reopened as a cultural venue, now used to stage Yueju (Cantonese opera) and local folk-performance evenings that echo the sung storytelling once performed there for the merchant community. The curatorial approach favors performance and atmosphere over a fixed object display: rather than a chronological exhibit, visitors experience the restored hall largely as it would have functioned, watching opera in the same courtyard space where merchants once gathered, with a small number of panels explaining the guild's history mounted along the entrance corridor.