Xidi Village

Xidi Village: The Ultimate Guide for Foreign Visitors

If Hongcun is the painting, Xidi is the calligraphy — more structured, more dignified, and in many ways more revealing of the extraordinary wealth and culture that Anhui merchants brought back to their ancestral villages. Tucked into a valley surrounded by green hills in southern Anhui Province, Xidi is a remarkably complete Ming and Qing Dynasty village whose grand ancestral halls, elaborate memorial archways, and exquisitely carved residences tell the story of China's most successful merchant class. Walking through Xidi feels less like visiting a tourist attraction and more like stepping into a private family album that spans five centuries.

Overview and Why Visit

Xidi was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000 alongside Hongcun, and the two villages are often visited together. However, Xidi has a distinctly different character. While Hongcun charms with its water system and lakeside scenery, Xidi impresses with the sheer scale and craftsmanship of its architecture. The village preserves 124 historic residences from the Ming and Qing dynasties, three ancestral halls, and one of Anhui's finest memorial archways. The wood, stone, and brick carvings throughout these buildings are among the most elaborate in China.

For foreign tourists, Xidi offers deeper insight into traditional Chinese social structure — the importance of clan identity, filial piety, education, and the merchant class's complex relationship with the Confucian establishment. The village layout, building hierarchies, and carved moral messages on every doorway reveal a world governed by intricate social codes. Xidi also tends to be somewhat less crowded than Hongcun, giving you more space to explore at your own pace.

A Brief History

Xidi was founded over 960 years ago by descendants of the Tang Dynasty imperial family. According to clan records, when the Tang Dynasty fell in 907 AD, a member of the Li imperial household was smuggled to safety by a loyal retainer. The child was given the surname Hu to conceal his identity, and his descendants eventually settled in what became Xidi. Whether or not the royal origin story is literally true, the Hu clan's sense of imperial descent profoundly shaped the village — its architecture is grander and more ambitious than typical rural settlements.

The village reached its zenith during the 18th and 19th centuries when Hu clan merchants dominated the salt, tea, and timber trades across eastern China. At its peak, Xidi had over 600 residences, 99 ancestral halls, 10 temples, and 7 memorial archways. The merchants, though wealthy beyond measure, operated within a Confucian society that ranked merchants below scholars, farmers, and artisans. To compensate, they invested heavily in education (producing many imperial examination graduates), built grand ancestral halls to demonstrate filial piety, and adorned their homes with carvings depicting moral stories and scholarly ideals.

Like Hongcun, Xidi was preserved by its economic decline. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the disruption of traditional trade routes, the merchant families dispersed. The village remained a quiet backwater until scholars and preservation experts "rediscovered" it in the 1980s. Today, approximately 300 families still live in the village.

What to See: Top Highlights

The Governor's Memorial Archway (Cishi Paifang)

Standing at the village entrance, this magnificent stone archway was erected in 1578 during the Ming Dynasty to honor Hu Wenguang, a Xidi native who served as a provincial governor. The archway is 12.3 meters tall and built entirely of local blue-gray stone, with five tiers of elaborate carvings depicting lions, phoenixes, and mythological scenes. It is one of the finest surviving memorial archways in Anhui and sets the tone for the architectural grandeur within. Once, Xidi had seven such archways; this is the sole survivor, the others having been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

Jing'ai Hall (Jing'ai Tang)

The largest and most impressive ancestral hall in Xidi, built during the Ming Dynasty and expanded in the Qing. The hall served as the gathering place for the entire Hu clan, where elders adjudicated disputes, performed ancestral rites, and celebrated festivals. The main hall features massive wooden columns, an intricately carved ceiling, and calligraphic scrolls with moral maxims. The sheer scale of the space — designed to hold hundreds of clan members — conveys the power and cohesion of the traditional Chinese extended family system.

Xidi Pursuit of Virtue Hall (Zhuimu Tang)

Built in 1794, this hall is dedicated to ancestral worship and features some of Xidi's finest wood carvings. The carved brackets, window screens, and beam decorations depict scenes from Chinese mythology and daily life with extraordinary detail — you can identify individual flowers, birds, and facial expressions. Art historians consider the carvings here among the best examples of Hui school woodwork.

Xiyuan (West Garden)

A private garden attached to a wealthy merchant's residence, Xiyuan demonstrates how Hui merchants adapted the scholar-garden tradition of Suzhou to the mountainous Anhui landscape. The compact garden features rockeries, a small pond, a pavilion, and carefully framed views of the surrounding hills. The integration of the natural landscape into the garden design is masterful. The garden also contains a small exhibition of Hui architecture and local cultural artifacts.

Daifu Di (Mandarin's Residence)

One of the best-preserved official residences in the village, this Qing Dynasty house was built for a high-ranking official. The layout follows strict hierarchical principles: the reception hall at the front, private quarters behind, with light wells providing ventilation and the feng shui benefit of "gathering wealth" (rainwater falling into the house symbolized prosperity flowing inward). The wood carvings inside are superb, with every panel telling a different moral story.

Peach and Plum Garden (Taohua Yuan)

This residence takes its name from the famous Chinese allegory by Tao Yuanming about a hidden utopian village. The house is notable for its unusually well-preserved interior furnishings, including original furniture, calligraphy, and household items. It gives a vivid sense of how an upper-class family actually lived in 19th-century Anhui, far more so than the emptied-out display houses common elsewhere.

Practical Information for Foreign Tourists

Tickets and Hours

Admission: CNY 104 (approximately USD 14). Includes a Chinese-language guided tour. English audio guides may be available at the entrance — ask at the ticket office.
Opening hours: 7:00 AM - 5:30 PM. The village is accessible outside these hours if you are staying overnight in a guesthouse inside the village.

How to Get There

From Huangshan city (Tunxi): Direct tourist buses run from the Huangshan Bus Station (approximately 1 hour, CNY 20). Taxis cost around CNY 150-180 one way.

From Hongcun: Xidi is just 20 minutes from Hongcun by car or local bus. Shared minivans (CNY 10-15) and taxis (CNY 50-60) ply the route regularly. Visiting both villages in one day is very feasible.

From Tangkou (Huangshan mountain base): Buses run to Xidi via Yi County (approximately 1 hour, CNY 20).

Where to Stay

Like Hongcun, Xidi has numerous family-run guesthouses inside the village, many in renovated Ming and Qing buildings. Prices range from CNY 120-500 per night. Staying overnight is highly recommended for the early morning and evening atmosphere. Xidi's guesthouses tend to be slightly cheaper and quieter than Hongcun's, as it receives fewer overnight visitors. Ask your guesthouse host for a home-cooked Hui cuisine dinner — this is often the best meal you will have in the region.

Food

Village restaurants serve the same Hui cuisine as Hongcun — stinky mandarin fish, mao tofu, bamboo shoots with cured ham, and local vegetables. Xidi's restaurants tend to be less touristy and marginally cheaper than Hongcun's. Look for small family restaurants along the back lanes. A local specialty is Xidi laba tofu — tofu fermented in a specific way during the Laba Festival (early January) that gives it a distinctive chewy texture and smoky flavor.

Combining Xidi with Other Attractions

Most visitors combine Xidi with Hongcun (same day) and Huangshan (separate day). A good itinerary: Day 1 — Climb Huangshan, stay on the summit. Day 2 — Descend Huangshan, drive to Xidi for the afternoon, stay overnight in Xidi. Day 3 — Morning in Xidi, drive to Hongcun for the afternoon. This gives each location adequate time.

Photography Tips

• The Memorial Archway: Best photographed in the late afternoon when the stone glows warm in the setting sun. Use a wide-angle lens to capture the full structure with the village rooftops behind.
• Interior carvings: Bring a fast lens (f/1.4-2.8) for the dim interiors of ancestral halls. A macro lens or close-up mode reveals astonishing detail in the wood carvings. Avoid flash, which flattens the three-dimensional depth of the carvings.
• Village lanes: The narrow alleys between white walls are photogenic at any time, but early morning light creates long shadows and warm tones. Look for elderly residents carrying baskets or tending plants for authentic human elements.
• Aerial views from surrounding hills: A short hike up the hills behind the village reveals a stunning bird's-eye view of the dark rooftops and white walls nestled in the green valley. Late afternoon light is best.
• Rapeseed flower season: In March and April, the fields surrounding Xidi explode with bright yellow rapeseed flowers, creating a spectacular contrast with the white-walled village. This is the most popular photography season — book accommodation early.
• Light wells: The interior courtyards with their light wells create dramatic shafts of sunlight in the late morning. Position yourself to capture the beam of light cutting through the dim interior.

Insider Tips

• Visit Xidi before Hongcun if possible. Xidi is the more architecturally impressive village, but visitors who see Hongcun first often feel "ancient village fatigue" by the time they reach Xidi. Experiencing Xidi first with fresh eyes ensures you fully appreciate its grandeur.
• Look up at the door lintels. Almost every house has carved stone or wood lintels above the doorway with calligraphic maxims — "cultivate virtue and accumulate goodness," "books bring gold," etc. These reveal the values that the merchant families wished to project.
• Talk to the residents. Many elderly residents remember the village before tourism and are happy to share stories. Even without a common language, gestures and smiles go a long way. Some homeowners will invite you inside to see rooms not on the official tour route.
• Explore the outer village. The ticketed area covers the core, but the surrounding lanes and fields are free to explore and often more atmospheric. Walk south along the stream that flows past the village for quiet countryside views.
• Evening cultural performances. Xidi sometimes hosts evening performances of traditional Hui opera or folk music in the ancestral halls. Ask at your guesthouse or the village management office for the schedule.
• Buy ink stones. The Huangshan region produces She inkstones (She yan), one of China's Four Treasures of the Study. Craftsmen in and around Xidi carve beautiful stones that make unique souvenirs. Verify quality by checking for a smooth, fine-grained surface.

Xidi is a place where architecture tells the story of an entire social class — the Anhui merchants who built China's economy for centuries yet were officially disdained by the Confucian establishment. Their response was to pour their wealth into buildings of such beauty and moral earnestness that they could not be dismissed. The carvings, the calligraphy, the soaring ancestral halls — all are arguments in stone and wood for the dignity of their achievement. Walk slowly, look carefully, and you will read a story more compelling than any museum exhibit.