Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui: Xidi and Hongcun

Seen from above, Hongcun isn’t shaped like a prawn, despite what half the guidebooks claim. It’s an ox. A Ming-dynasty feng shui master named He Keda spent years studying the local topography before laying out a design where a nearby hill forms the ox’s head, old trees stand in for its horns, the houses form its body, the winding water channels are its intestines, and the crescent-shaped Moon Pond at the village center is its stomach. South Lake, added later, became the belly. It’s one of the most literal applications of feng shui design principles you can walk through anywhere in China, and knowing the metaphor changes how you read the whole layout instead of just admiring pretty water.

Two villages, two different stories

Xidi and Hongcun sit in Yi County, southern Anhui, both part of the same 2000 UNESCO inscription for preserving an intact style of Hui merchant architecture: black-tiled roofs, whitewashed gable walls, and elaborate wood, brick, and stone carving on doorways and courtyard screens. But they were built for different reasons and it shows.

Xidi traces back to the Song Dynasty, founded originally as a settlement tied to travel and trade routes through the region, and it grew wealthy during the Ming and Qing periods as merchant families built increasingly elaborate courtyard houses along a grid of narrow lanes. The Hu family compound here (often mislabeled online under other surnames) is the best-preserved cluster of these merchant houses, and the stone memorial arch at the village entrance, one of the few in the region to survive Cultural Revolution-era destruction, is worth stopping at before you go further in.

Hongcun’s founding actually predates Xidi’s expansion, tracing to the Southern Song Dynasty in the 1130s, and its defining feature isn’t a single building but the water system itself, the ox-shaped network of channels and ponds that still runs drinking water past nearly every house in the village center. South Lake, built in 1607, gives Hongcun its most photographed view: whitewashed houses reflected across still water, a scene that became globally recognizable after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon filmed sequences here in 2000. That film is also the reason Hongcun gets considerably more foot traffic than Xidi today.

Getting there

Both villages sit within a short drive of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), and most visitors combine a stop here with a Huangshan hiking trip. As of January 2026 there’s a new customized shuttle service running directly from Huangshan North Railway Station to Hongcun and Xidi, stopping along the way at Qiandao Lake and other points, with single-trip fares in the 30 to 35 yuan range and a travel time of roughly 90 minutes to two hours. Alternatively, hourly buses run from Huangshan City (Tunxi) through Xidi to Hongcun between 8am and 4pm. The two villages themselves are only about 18 kilometers apart, roughly a 30-minute drive, so seeing both in one day is entirely realistic if you start early.

Admission runs 104 yuan per village at last check, and each ticket is village-specific rather than combined, so budget for both separately if you want to see the contrast between them. Xidi’s gates are typically open from 7:30am to 5:30pm.

The crowd problem, and the fix

Hongcun draws serious tour bus traffic, largely thanks to its film fame, and midday in high season means shoulder-to-shoulder lanes near South Lake. Xidi is quieter simply because it lacks the same cinematic reputation. If you want an even calmer alternative, Nanping village, also in Yi County and also a filming location for the same movie, gets a fraction of the visitors while preserving eight ancestral halls and roughly 300 Ming and Qing dynasty residences. Villages like Chengkan, Tangmo, and Bishan nearby are quieter still, and worth a look if you’re spending several days in the region rather than doing a single rushed day trip.

Arriving right at opening, before 8:30am, is the most reliable way to get Hongcun’s South Lake view without dozens of other people in the frame.

Culture and food while you’re there

Both villages host seasonal festivals, including lantern celebrations in early spring and Dragon Boat Festival events in early summer, and small workshops around both villages teach traditional paper-cutting, woodcarving, and pottery to visitors willing to slow down for an afternoon. Local Anhui cuisine leans on preserved and fermented flavors that surprise people expecting standard Cantonese or Sichuan fare; look for stinky mandarin fish (a Huangshan specialty that smells stronger than it tastes) alongside the more familiar braised duck dishes.

Before you go

March through November is the comfortable weather window, though spring rain can make Hongcun’s stone lanes slick, so bring shoes with real grip rather than sandals. Guesthouses inside both villages let you stay past the day-trip crowds and see the lanes empty out in early evening, which is arguably the best few hours to actually experience either place. If you can only manage one village and it’s your first trip to the region, pick Xidi. It gets you the same architecture with noticeably fewer tour groups blocking every doorway.