The most beautiful village in China: the quaint ancient village of Anhui

Anhui has many well-preserved ancient villages. Although it is not as tender as Jiangnan Ancient Town, it still has its own charm. They are surrounded by mountains and rivers, with large-scale ancient buildings, smoke coming from cooking stoves, and children playing in the villages. It's a paradise, but full of life.

Hongcun, Anhui

Among them, Hongcun, Taijihu Village and Nanping are the representatives. Taking advantage of the warm sunshine in spring, let's take a trip to the ancient villages in Anhui and appreciate the charm of the beautiful countryside in southern China.

Gorgeous countryside

Immerse yourself in the tranquil and remote Moxiang Village in Hongcun.

Li Mubai leads the horse. Many students from art schools around the world come here to sketch. In their free time, they rent a bicycle and ride through the rice fields. Such an enjoyable journey is possible all year round. There were more tourists than in previous years, but it was less crowded. It's a beautiful morning by the lake. The foreground of the lotus leaves and the reflection of the old Hui-style house with the smoke curling from the kitchen stove are simply a pastoral picture. This is not unfamiliar. You may still remember this scene on an 8-cent ordinary stamp many years ago.

The belly-shaped village will make you marvel at the wisdom and poetry of Huizhou merchants. The water flows to the door of every house and finally collects in the moon pond near the village. The deep alleys and horse-head walls often remind me of many scenes from 0755 to 79000 when I was a child. Tangzhi is worth a visit and is the most magnificent courtyard in the village. It is recommended to live in Songhetang. There is a lake and pavilion in the yard. You can sleep on the old-fashioned carved bed at night, which is very enjoyable.

Introduction to attractions

Hui ancient dwellings and cow-shaped water system ancient villages.

Interior of the ancient building in Hongcun

Hongcun, an ancient residential building with a long history of more than 500 years, is a typical representative of Huizhou architecture and embodies the infinite wisdom of the working people. The villages are distributed in the shape of a cow, and the water system penetrates into every household. Clean water has been flowing into every household for many years. After 500 years of baptism, Hongcun still maintains its original appearance, and its complete architectural structure has always been praised by tourists. The largest house, Chengzhitang, is known as the Palace Museum.

There is a poem describing the wonder of Hongcun: the mountain is a horned bull tree and the bridge is a four-hoofed house, which is enough to express the wonder of Hongcun. There are more than 140 well-preserved ancient dwellings from the Ming and Qing Dynasties in the village. Hongcun is a unique and scientific village water system design based on bionics in ancient China. It not only provides convenience for villagers to produce and use water for domestic use, but also creates a good environment where "there is a long road around it and a clear spring in front of every house."

The macro village is called a cow-shaped village, and it must be inseparable from cows.

Beef tripe: The shape of Hongcun Nanhu is like a big tripe and a square circle, which is exactly where the tripe is. This is a famous shape.

The cow’s belly: Hongcun Moon Marsh. The cow’s belly is half-moon shaped, and the moon marsh is just right.

Horns: Two big trees, like the horns of a cow. They have a history of five hundred years, but they are still lush and lush.

Tang Zhi: The largest private residence in Hongcun, known as the Palace Museum. Daqi Spring is another attraction in Hongcun.

The full price of Hongcun tickets is 80 yuan, and students with student ID cards and military disability ID cards over 60 years old can enjoy a half-price discount. Tickets include tour guide fees.

Beautiful Taiji Lake Village

In Jixi, the word quaint appears most frequently, and Taiji Lake Village is the place most talked about by local residents. When we approached Taiji Lake Village, we felt like it was "hidden in a boudoir, unknown to others" and marveled at the beauty this ancient town brought to us.

Taiji Lake Village, a famous historical and cultural village in Anhui Province, is 15 kilometers away from Jixi County and 3 kilometers away from Hu Zongxian Shangshu Mansion Scenic Area in Longchuan. The Yuanxi River passes through the village in an "S" shape. It is an ancient Tai Chi Feng Shui village with a history of more than 800 years, with "lions and elephants guarding the sun and moon as turtles and snakes fence". This is the only way to pass through the Huihang Ancient Road. The village still retains the Yinquan Street of the Ming Dynasty, thousand-year-old trees, ancient bridges, and more than a hundred ancient houses. It is located at the entrance of the lake. Most people will walk along a street called "Liao Zhai" The Yuanxi River flows around the south of the village in an inverted "S" shape. The curved river completely divides the land into two parts: village houses and farmland. People can't help but think of the folk "Tai Chi diagram".

Draw a circle on the "Jixi County Socialist New Countryside Construction Hucun Village Improvement Plan". It is not difficult to find that the winding Yuanxi River is like a magical "Tai Chi" curve, dividing Lake Village into villages and fields. If the eyes of the "Yin Yang Fish" are drawn on two plots with different functions. A vivid folk "Yin Yang Fish Tai Chi Picture" immediately caught my eye.

Zhang Ancestral Hall

Zhang Ancestral Hall

Walking into Taijihu Village, a tall and majestic ancestral hall is located at the west end of the village - the Zhang Ancestral Hall. On the screen wall in front of the ancestral hall, there is a painting: Picture of Auspicious Beasts. In the swinging pavilion hall of the temple, there is a Coiling Dragon Incense Pavilion from the Ming Dynasty. There are six swinging coiling dragons carved on the columns, which represents the highest level of Huizhou wood carving and is a masterpiece. This is a traditional cultural swing prop in Taiji Lake Village. Every man in Tai Chi Village must "play" when he reaches the age of 40, that is, conduct a large-scale entertainment activity called "Dangju Pavilion". The swing is in the shape of a windmill, and the girls are dressed in ancient clothes and tied to chairs, singing Hui tunes and accompanying the music. The pavilion is a square box of kapok, surrounded by ornamental flowers. There are two or three young children playing roles in a play. The actors are fixed on the pavilion with steel bars according to the characters, leaving no trace, and it is an amazing spectacle. It can be called a unique place in the south of the Yangtze River. Yinquan Street

After leaving the ancestral hall, along the winding stone road, you arrive at Water Street - Yinquan Street. Yinquan Street was built in the Ming Dynasty and is more than 300 meters long. The water comes from Shijin Mountain, passes through the village, and flows into the Shimen River. All year round, the stream never stops, and the sound of water is like the melody of a piano. Even if the water rises in spring, the water cannot reach the street, and the sound of rushing water is even more beautiful, hence the name Silver Spring Street. Yinquan Street and the north and south main streets form a "D" shape, all paved with bluestone. There are two stone bridges erected on the street, called the big and small stone bridges. There are more than 100 Huizhou-style buildings with white walls, green tiles and horse-head walls along both sides of the river, including residences, shops, medicine shops, oil shops, etc. Most of them are Ming and Qing Dynasty buildings, simple and elegant, well-proportioned and row upon row. There are stone steps leading to the river for villagers to wash. "Small bridges, flowing water, and people" present a fresh and bright landscape of a village.

Brick carving archway

The first gatehouse village in China

The brick carvings on the gatehouse of Taiji Village are the best in Huizhou, and every brick carving is unique A rare treasure with a strangely deformed romantic beauty. There are a large number of brick carvings, with an area of ??20 large carvings and a maximum carving area of ??4.2 square meters; the doors have rich shapes, including scroll type, tower type, hanging column type, etc.; the carving techniques are skillful, with a strong three-dimensional sense and texture effect, and the carving skills are It reaches its peak; the carvings are rich in content, vivid in image, appropriate in composition and prominent in theme; the brick door covers of the village have been carved for more than 300 years and are extremely rare cultural and historical materials. Therefore, Taiji Lake Village is also known as "The First Gate Tower Village in China".

Nanping Sunset Red

Overview of Nanping

Nanping, located in the southwest of Yi County, is a large-scale ancient village with a history of thousands of years. So far, nearly 300 ancient buildings from the Ming and Qing Dynasties have been completely preserved. Ancestral halls such as Kuiguang Hall and Xu Zhi Hall are huge and magnificent. Residential houses such as "Shensi Hall" and "Lingbing Pavilion" are dignified and elegant with different styles; the "Ten Thousand Pine Forest" in Shuikou has towering ancient trees and ancient bridges; seventy-two ancient temples are intertwined among high walls and deep courtyards, like a maze , full of mystery. Nanping, Hongcun and other places are also the filming locations for many famous movies such as "Jixi County Socialist New Countryside Construction and Hucun Village Renovation Plan", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Feng Yue" and so on.

Nanping Observation Point

1. Banchun Garden: also known as "Plum Garden", it was built during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. This is a private school built by Ye, a wealthy businessman in the village, for his children to study. There are three large bookstores and a half-moon-shaped courtyard in the park. A couplet reads, "Jingle can forget the magnificence of the crown, and the pure travels will continue the dust of the front." The "West Garden", famous for "Ju Dou" by Yao Nai, a famous essayist in the Qing Dynasty and a representative of the Tongcheng School, is located in front of the Ye family ancestral hall and was built in 1791 during the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty. Covering an area of ??nearly 1 hectare, it is composed of four parts: peony garden, plum and bamboo garden, landscape garden, and pine and cypress garden. It was built by Ye Jun, a villager at that time, for children to learn and cultivate. The West Garden has been destroyed, and now only the stone sculpture "West Garden" remains. The front door is closed, leaving behind traces such as Xiyuan Creek, Xiyuan Bridge, and ancient camphor trees. There are also "Lampei Bookstore", "Banyu Mountain House", "Meiyuan Family School", etc. in the village.

2. Xu Zhitang: "Xuzhitang", the ancestral hall of the Ye family in Nanping Village, is a solemn ancient temple with double eaves and an area of ??2,000 square meters. There are gold plaques on the top of the door that read "Appointment to Hanlin", "Qin bestowed Hanlin", "Qin took a county", indicating the achievements of the ancestors and bringing glory to future generations. In front of the ancestral hall, it stands on the wall, with a tall gate tower and beautifully carved large stone drums as tall as a pair of people. Four large stone pillars support the forehead, with ancient Dingbao bottles carved on them. Zhitang is divided into three floors: upper, middle and lower. As soon as you enter the gate, you will see 80 huge wooden pillars supporting this magnificent building. There are wooden couplets on the pillars such as "Stone Forest School Yan Jiayuan, Wu Gui Xinxiang" and so on. Hanging on the beams are famous plaques such as "Gong Yuan", "Jinshi", "Jingkui", "Song Jun Cao Jie", "Jin Hou Jisheng" and so on. The hall is a place where drums and music are played, and a stage can be set up for performances. The middle hall is the auditorium, which is the hall where sacrificial ceremonies are held. The upper hall is the worship hall, and the ancestral tablets of the tribe are placed upstairs. The central hall and upper hall can accommodate hundreds of people for ceremonies. In the past, the gate of Zhitang was only opened during major festivals, and entry and exit were usually through the side entrance. The height of the gate is higher than that of the other seven ancestral halls, and all ancestral halls and ancestral halls with the same surname are insurmountable.

Nanping Ancient Town

3. Nanping Village: Nanping Village, formerly known as Ye Village, is now renamed Nanping Village because it is located on Nanping Mountain in the southwest and north. It turned out to be a very inconspicuous mountain village. It developed rapidly after a man named Ye moved from Baima Mountain in Qimen in the late Yuan Dynasty. By the Ming Dynasty, Nanping Village had already reached considerable scale, and the three surnames of Ye, Cheng and Li gradually formed in the village. There are still 72 deep lanes, 36 wells, and more than 300 ancient dwellings of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

4. Nanping Ancestral Hall Group

The most distinctive building in Nanping is probably the ancestral hall. "The old patriarchal system is prevalent in the city. Each surname has its own ancestral hall, branch, and faction, which becomes an ancestral hall." There are still 8 ancestral halls in Nanping, most of which are located on a 200-meter-long Hengdian Street in front of the village. on the central axis. Among them, there are "ancestral halls" owned by the entire family, "branch halls" owned by a certain branch, and "family halls" owned by one or several families. The ancestral hall is large in scale, and the ancestral hall is small and exquisite, forming a group of ancestral halls with simple style and mysterious colors.

5. Shensi Hall: "Shensi Hall" is a courtyard about half an acre in size, with complete stone benches and stones. The whole house faces west and east, with two entrances at the front and back, three corridors and three steps. It is entered through a gate covered with blue bricks. There is a small garden on the left, and a zigzag path paved with stone slabs leads to the main hall, which means "bad luck leads to bad luck".

The front hall of the main house is completely arranged according to the layout of that year. The black lacquer plaque above the nave has the words "Shensi Hall" in large gold regular script, which was written by the famous Huang Tianbi

Harem Activities The place is backward, and the place backward is smaller than the place forward. The backward wood carvings are well preserved, and the characters on them are lifelike, and they are all characters in the biography of Yue Fei. During the Cultural Revolution, the Four Olds were destroyed. The owner was smart and pasted the wood carving with yellow clay, with Chairman Mao's quotations on it, so the rebels did not dare to destroy it at the time, but fortunately it was preserved. This "Moon Boat Picture" gives people a beautiful enjoyment and profound enlightenment in both its shape and artistic conception. It is worth mentioning that the owner’s kitchen has earthen stoves, energy-saving stoves used in the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China and now, as well as convenient and simple gas stoves. From here, you can see the tremendous changes in the countryside over the past hundred years. The ancestral hall of the shrine is Shangsu Hall.

6. Step by step: Nanping Village has 72 lanes, so Nanping Village is also called the "Maze Village". The stepped ascending alley, or "Longhouse Alley", is the longest and most hierarchical of the 72 alleys. There are 23 steps at the end, one step higher than the next. The villagers call it the "step-by-step alley".

There are often stone tablets engraved with "Taishan Shigandang" on the walls of crossroads or west intersections, which have three meanings: first, as a road sign to tell everyone that this is a T-shaped or crossroads; second, to protect the road. The wall reminds the villagers that this is an intersection. When carrying goods, be careful to move slowly to prevent wood and stones from hitting the wall at the corner; it is the villagers of San Village who believe that erecting a "Shi Gandang" stone tablet at the intersection can ward off evil spirits. In addition, there are long concave stones at each corner, indicating a step back. Hui merchants are Confucian merchants.

They took neighborly relations into consideration when building their houses, "taking a step back and letting the three of them be at peace", which shows their broad mind and philosophy of putting peace first.