Xidi Village
Looking like something right out of a fairy tale, Xidi Village is almost too picturesque to be real, yet this ancient Chinese village is so genuine that it has received protective status as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site (November 2000); Xidi Village is not just a preservation-worthy relic from China's cultural past, it is a preservation-worthy page from the cultural history of mankind.
Xidi Village is situated at the foot of the southern slope of the Yellow Mountain (Huangshan’s "shan" meaning "mountain"). In this idyllic valley of clear flowing streams, goldfish ponds and paddy fields sit Xidi Village in all its 900-year-old opulence, a village whose architecture is so ornate that it could only have been created by men of power, wealth, and taste.
Xidi Facts
- Ticket Price: RMB 104 per person
- Opening Hours: 8:00 to 16:00
- The best time to visit: is autumn, especially in November.
Highlights in Xidi Village
Zouma Pavilion
Zouma Pavilion (走马楼) was built in the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty. It was constructed for the local richest person Hu Guansan to welcome the relative of his daughter-in-law (wife of Hu’s son), Cao Zhenyong, the chancellor working in the imperial court. The Zouma Pavilion visitors can see is restored according to the layout of the past. Zouma Pavilion is a two-floor building with pink walls and a black roof.
Visitors can appreciate a series of traditional performances in ancient China such as the Huangmei Opera (黄梅戏), Throwing the Colorful Ball (抛彩球), Tea Ceremony (茶道) and some others. There is a single-hole stone arch bridge called the Wugeng Ancient Bridge built outside the Zouma pavilion. The stream flows through the bridge and around the pavilion where visitors can appreciate one of the Xidi Eight Scenes-Charming Moon on the Wugeng Bridge.
Features of Xidi
The style of the street in Xidi mainly consists of the main road which runs in the east-west direction and is flanked by two parallel streets. These major streets are joined by many narrow alleyways. Small open spaces are confined to areas immediately in front of the main public buildings, such as the Hall of Respect, the Hall of Reminiscence, and the Memorial Archway of the Governor.
The three carving styles including those on stones, bricks, and wood are the most renowned. Visitors can find these elaborate carvings on door frames, lattice walls, columns, and beams in the halls. The birds, flowers, grass, and figures carved on them are presented vividly.
History of Xidi Village
Indeed, Xidi Village, originally built during the reign of Emperor Huangyou (CE 1049-1054) of the Northern Song (CE 960-1127) Dynasty, owes its greatest cultural and architectural influence to a family of merchants, the Hu family, who rebuilt the city, as it were, on the family's wealth during the reign (CE 1449-1457) of Emperor Jingtai of the Ming Dynasty (CE 1368-1644).
The Hu family enlarged the village of Xidi considerably, laying a network of winding, crisscrossing stone-paved streets and roads along which were erected administrative, commercial, and residential buildings as well as ancestral temples and academies of classical learning, not to speak of the network of bridges necessary to span the three waterways that converge near the village.
Because all of this has remained preserved to this day, including the still very much lived-in houses of the villagers themselves, Xidi Village can be likened to an open-air museum.
Xidi Village contains roughly 300 buildings in the Hui Style* that were erected during the Ming and Qing (CE 1644-1911) Dynasties. Brick and wood dominate, with exquisite stone archways, stone carvings, and stone-paved streets and courtyards. Major present-day tourist attractions are in Xidi Village.
Lingyun Pavilion, Ruiyu Pavilion, Cishi House ("Cishi" being an official title in ancient times), Daifu House ("Daifu" being another ancient official title), Qingyun House, East Garden, Taoli Garden, West Garden, Jing'ai Hall, Lvfu Hall, and Yinfu Hall, all of which are pleasingly laid out in harmony with the other man-made structures of the village and with the village's charming, cozy gardens.
Culture of Xidi Village
"Hui" is short for Huizhou, as in 'the Hui dialect' or 'the Hui Opera' (note that "Hui" sometimes refers to Anhui, the province, as in 'Hui Cuisine', but "Anhui" is of much later origin (CE 1667), being the composite name made up from combining the first character of each of the prefecture names of the area at the time, "An-qing" and "Hui-zhou").
Hui-style architecture refers to the vernacular, or people’s, architecture, as opposed to the architectural style that characterized royal palaces and other official edifices. Yet the two are intimately related, for the degree of sophistication of vernacular architecture depends directly on the wealth that is created – and thus spread throughout society – by the ruling emperor.
Huizhou vernacular architecture owes its impressive style to the opulence that was created during the reign (CE 1127–1162) of Emperor Gaozong, the first emperor of the Southern Song (CE 1127-1279) Dynasty and younger half-brother to the last emperor of the Northern Song (CE 960-1127) Dynasty who had been captured by the Jin army in 1127, only one year after his father had abdicated in his favor.
Emperor Gaozong moved the capital from Kaifeng in the north, which, in 1127 had definitively fallen under Jin control when the city was overrun by Jurchen forces, to Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province), where he built a sumptuously large city which had a positive and contagious economic effect not only on the local community but on cities throughout the south.
Prominent administrators, courtiers, merchants, and other purveyors to the royal court likewise built extravagantly back home in their respective provincial towns and villages, including in the area of Huizhou, though this development came to Huizhou only later, as indicated above, i.e., during the Ming Dynasty reign of Emperor Jingtai.