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Hongcun and Xidi: Anhui’s Ancient Villages Beyond Huangshan

Scenic
Jul 30, 2026
South Lake in Hongcun village reflecting an arched stone bridge and a row of whitewashed Huizhou houses

Hongcun and Xidi sit less than an hour from Huangshan’s cable cars, yet most visitors climbing the mountain never make the detour. That is the gap worth closing. These two villages in Anhui’s Yi County are not a recreation, a theme-park version of “old China” built for a photo — people still live inside them, farming the same fields and drawing water through the same centuries-old channels their ancestors engineered. Huangshan gives you the scenery painters imagined. Hongcun and Xidi give you the life those paintings were actually set in.

What Hongcun and Xidi Actually Are

Both villages were built by merchants and officials from the Ming and Qing dynasties, who returned home wealthy from careers elsewhere in China and poured that money into houses, ancestral halls and — crucially — water. UNESCO inscribed them jointly in 2000 as the Ancient Villages in Southern Anhui, citing their street plans, architecture, decoration and water systems as unusually complete survivors of a settlement type that vanished almost everywhere else during the twentieth century (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, n.d.). Xidi holds 124 well-preserved wooden houses from the Ming and Qing eras, each carrying the wood, brick and stone carving typical of the region (UNESCO World Heritage Centre, n.d.). Hongcun, with roughly 900 years of history, is nicknamed the “village in a Chinese painting.”

Why Hongcun and Xidi Are Worth the Detour

Hongcun’s real trick is invisible until it is pointed out: the entire village is laid out in the shape of an ox. Leigang Hill forms the head, two old trees on the hill are the horns, the houses make up the body, and a winding stream threads through as the intestines, feeding a crescent pond — Moon Pond, the ox’s stomach — before draining into South Lake, the belly, built in 1607 (China Travel, n.d.; China Discovery, n.d.). Every household along that stream still draws water from it. It is hydraulic engineering disguised as folklore, and it still works.

Xidi plays a quieter role — less symbolic geometry, more sheer density of intact Ming and Qing architecture along a single stone-paved street. Fans of a certain film may recognize Hongcun’s Painted Bridge without knowing why: it is the arch Li Mubai leads his horse across in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the scene put the village on the international map (China Culture Tour, n.d.).

Best Time to Visit Hongcun and Xidi

Late March through May and again in October and November match Huangshan’s own best travel window — cool enough to walk comfortably, with the surrounding rapeseed fields yellow in spring and maple color in the hills come autumn. Mist and light rain are not a reason to reschedule here the way they might be for the mountain summit. Reflections in Moon Pond and South Lake are part of what makes Hongcun look like a painting in the first place, and a grey sky often improves the photograph rather than ruining it.

How to Get to Hongcun and Xidi

Both villages sit around 28 miles from Huangshan’s Tunxi transport hub (Rome2Rio, n.d.). Direct buses run from the Huangshan Tourism Passenger Transport Hub roughly once an hour between 8:00 and 16:00, passing Xidi on the way to Hongcun — tell the driver which stop you need. A one-way ticket runs about 23 yuan, and the ride takes a little over two hours including any transfer (TravelChinaGuide, n.d.). Most travelers base themselves in Tunxi or at Huangshan’s foot and treat the villages as a full-day loop, since seeing both properly, without rushing, easily fills one.

Must-See Spots and Experiences

  • Moon Pond and South Lake, Hongcun — the ox’s stomach and belly, and the classic reflection shot of whitewashed houses against water.
  • The Painted Bridge, Hongcun — the film location, quieter in early morning before tour groups arrive.
  • Chengzhi Hall, Hongcun — a merchant’s mansion with some of the region’s finest wood carving, open to walk through room by room.
  • The main stone street, Xidi — dense enough with intact Ming and Qing façades that a slow walk feels closer to a museum without walls than a village street.
  • Ancestral halls, Xidi — several remain open and give a clearer sense of the clan structure that built and funded these villages than any single house does alone.

Local Food Around Hongcun and Xidi

The villages sit inside Anhui’s Huizhou food region, and a couple of dishes are worth actively seeking out rather than skipping for something familiar. Stinky mandarin fish (臭鳜鱼, chòu guìyú) is fermented for several days before cooking — the smell warns you before the taste convinces you, and it is one of Anhui cuisine’s signature dishes. Mao tofu (毛豆腐) arrives visibly covered in a layer of white mold, pan-fried afterward, and tastes far milder than it looks. Both dishes turn up on small guesthouse menus inside and around the villages, usually at a fraction of what the same plate costs in a Huangshan hotel restaurant.

Practical Tips

Entry tickets are sold separately for each village and checked at gates staffed by local guides — buy in advance during peak spring and autumn weekends, when both villages get busy with domestic tour groups. Mobile payment is standard even at small guesthouse counters; our guide on how to pay in China covers setting up Alipay or WeChat Pay before you arrive, since some smaller vendors here do not keep much cash on hand. English signage is thin once past the ticket gate, so a translation app is genuinely useful — see getting by in China without Chinese for the basics. For onward transport once you are back in Tunxi, our getting around China guide covers trains and buses to the rest of the province.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • Treating Hongcun and Xidi as a quick add-on to a Huangshan mountain day — both deserve their own unhurried day.
  • Skipping Xidi because Hongcun is more photographed — Xidi’s architecture is denser and, on most days, less crowded.
  • Arriving mid-morning on a spring or autumn weekend, when tour buses cluster around Moon Pond.
  • Avoiding mao tofu or stinky mandarin fish on sight — both are milder in flavor than their smell or appearance suggests.
  • Assuming a rainy forecast means canceling — a soft grey sky is when Hongcun looks most like the painting it is named for.

References

China Culture Tour. (n.d.). Hongcun village, World Heritage Site near Huangshan. Retrieved from https://www.chinaculturetour.com/huangshan/top-attractions/hongcun-village.htm

China Discovery. (n.d.). Hongcun, ancient village nearby Huangshan, South Anhui, China. Retrieved from https://www.chinadiscovery.com/anhui/huangshan/hongcun-ancient-village.html

China Travel. (n.d.). Huangshan ancient village: Hongcun village. Retrieved from https://www.chinatravel.com/huangshan/attraction/hongcun-village

Rome2Rio. (n.d.). Xidi to Huangshan Tunxi Bus Station. Retrieved from https://www.rome2rio.com/s/Xidi/Huangshan-Tunxi-Bus-Station

TravelChinaGuide. (n.d.). Hongcun village, China: How to reach from Huangshan and Shanghai. Retrieved from https://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/anhui/huangshan/hongcun-village.htm

UNESCO World Heritage Centre. (n.d.). Ancient villages in southern Anhui – Xidi and Hongcun. Retrieved from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1002/