As one of the earliest regions in modern China to engage with Western architectural culture, Jiangnan became a crucial site of cross-cultural interaction. The rise of Sino-Western hybrid ancestral halls in this area represents a distinctive architectural phenomenon through which lineage-based ritual traditions negotiated with Western classical idioms during modernization. Using typological and morphological analysis, this study explores how an architectural form rooted in long-standing traditions developed adaptive mechanisms in response to external cultural influences. Based on archival records, historical photographs, and field surveys, four principal stylistic types are identified: the Veranda style , the Western facade Style , the Chinese curved roof style , and the Shikumen style . Each type reveals a unique synthesis between Chinese and Western architectural vocabularies. Drawing on sociological and historical anthropological perspectives, the paper further interprets how modernist ideologies and socio-political transformations shaped the westernization of ancestral halls. The analysis clarifies the internal logic of transformation within Chinese architectural modernity and contributes to the theoretical understanding of the ancestral hall typology. More broadly, the study provides insights into contemporary design innovation and regional cultural identity within the processes of modernization and globalization.
Sun et al. (Sun,) studied this question.