Hongcun and Xidi: The Merchant Villages Below Huangshan
Two villages in southern Anhui, listed by UNESCO in 2000, preserve the white-walled houses of the Huizhou merchants. Hongcun was laid out in the shape of an ox, around a water system that still runs past every door.
Hongcun and Xidi are two villages in Yi County, in the south of Anhui province, some 40 to 50 kilometres from Huangshan. UNESCO listed them together in 2000 as Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui, under three criteria. The villages are graphic illustrations of a type of settlement created in a feudal period on a prosperous trading economy; their buildings and street patterns reflect the social and economic structure of a long, settled period of Chinese history; and they preserve to an exceptional degree the traditional non-urban settlements that have largely disappeared across China. They are among the best places to see how the merchants of Huizhou, the old name of this district, lived.
The village shaped like an ox
Hongcun was founded in the Southern Song dynasty, traditionally in 1131, by the Wang family. Its descendants became prosperous merchants and built up the village. Its plan is said to represent an ox. Leigang Hill, behind the village, is the head, and two large trees on it are the horns. The houses form the body, and bridges across the stream are the legs.
The water is the remarkable thing. A waterway several centuries old runs through the lanes and past each household, linking them to two bodies of water: the Moon Pond, a half-moon in the middle of the village, and South Lake, at its entrance. Residents drew water, washed and fought fires from the channel at their door.
Many houses of the Ming and Qing dynasties survive; one source counts about 150. Their carving, in wood, brick and stone, is regarded as among the finest of its kind in China. Chengzhi Hall, one of the largest houses, is open to visitors and contains a small museum.
Xidi
Xidi lies about 15 kilometres from Hongcun. It is traditionally dated to the Northern Song dynasty, in the eleventh century, and about 124 Ming and Qing residences are reported to survive, though counts vary between sources. Like Hongcun, it grew rich on trade, its families, the Hu among them, returning home with the wealth of careers elsewhere in China. It is known for its carved houses and its ancestral halls, and for lanes of bluish stone paving beside small streams, which have changed little since the nineteenth century.
The Huizhou house
The houses of both villages follow one pattern. The outer walls are high, white and almost windowless, with stepped gables. Inside, rooms of dark timber open onto a small courtyard, a skywell, which brings in light and rain. The merchants who built them spent their working lives away from home, and the houses were made to keep their families secure and to show, in the carving, what the family had achieved.
For travellers
The villages are usually visited together with Huangshan, the granite mountain to the north-east. Go early in the morning, when the day visitors have not arrived, or stay the night in one of the old houses that take guests. People still live in both villages. A car and driver is the easiest way to link them.