What is the best ancient village in Wuyuan?

Wuyuan is located in Jiangxi province, which was previously classified as Huizhou. For many people, this is a fantastic place, and it is called the most beautiful village in China. There are many well-preserved ancient villages here. Share with you what is interesting about the ancient village in Wuyuan.

Go to Wuyuan (Qigong Town to Wuyuan County)

After a long time, I will still think of a village I met on the road, which is only a dozen kilometers away from Wuyuan County. The houses in the village are typical Huizhou houses, with moss growing on white walls and tiles. I guess they may have a history of decades, and there should be two or three floors. The gable protruding from the horse head wall also makes the building look taller.

The house is approximately square, and the brick carving door is a narrow wooden door with black and gray. There is a clearing of more than ten meters in front of the door. Some people plant fruit trees, others pile firewood. The clearing is also adjacent to the county road, with a small canal about one and a half meters wide in the middle. Slate or cement precast slab will be built opposite the door as a bridge for the passage. Several children walked barefoot in the canal to play, and a washerwoman sat on the slate. The water in the canal is clear and looks cool, and occasionally a few leaves float on it. There is a circle of running water in front of someone's house, in which there are several red carp or crucian carp.

I felt a surge of joy in my heart. The feeling of people with small bridges and flowing water is still quite good, but young people are rarely seen. Perhaps, like many villages, they have gone to the city to make a living. In the bustling city of Zaixi, will they occasionally think of such a quiet village?

There is a dilapidated Huizhou old house on the roadside, and there is no horse head wall on one side. You can see the wooden beam frame of the house, which is a good cross section of Huizhou folk houses. The house is a typical wooden structure with bucket structure in the south, which saves wood compared with the beam structure and is suitable for buildings with little room. Weeds and bricks are scattered all over the floor and seem to have been abandoned for a long time.

I booked a youth hostel online, which is a two-story duplex building, in the north of the county seat, next to Xingjiang. When I came up with my camel bag, the college students who had had a holiday in the living room were chatting happily. Aunt Hu opened this youth hostel and took me to the attic. There are two one-meter-two small beds in the room. The windows face south and you can see most of the county. A clothes rack was set up on the platform of the attic, and several rectangular flower pots were placed on the ground, which was a bit like a manger.

Wuyuan county chengnan youth hotel

I rode 100 kilometers from Qigong Town to Wuyuan County. Although the journey is not far, I have also walked in the mountains for a long time. My legs are sore and swollen, and my knees are extremely painful because of long-term bending and straightening. Holding the stairs on the wall, I knelt down and threw myself into the street, fearing that my knees would not last for a while.

It was getting dark, so I went out to look for food. A bottle of cold beer, a bowl of rice and a dish of fried meat, 25 yuan, are a little expensive. On my way back, I passed a hotel. There are several tourist buses parked outside, and a group of middle-aged and elderly people wearing travel agency hats. At this time, I still envy them. After all, traveling alone can be really lonely sometimes.

Likeng scenic spot

At night, the attic is extremely stuffy. I opened the window, opened the door and even used a wet towel to cool down, but I still woke up many times. It was not until dawn that I rode my bike to Likeng Scenic Area, which is more than ten kilometers away, which is the closest scenic spot to the county seat. Likeng is a national scenic spot and an ancient village where Li's surname gathers. Its architectural features are typical Huizhou architecture, which is integrated with mountains and rivers.

Tickets to 60 yuan are still a little expensive. The entrance to the scenic spot is actually the entrance to the village, and it takes hundreds of meters to get to Likeng Village. During this period, you have to pass an "ancient bridge", a Buddhist temple, Wenchang Tower, and then a piece of Huizhou-style antique building with white walls and tiles to reach the real "Likeng Village".

Likeng Village memorial archway

The so-called ancient bridge is just a newly built small bridge, which used to be the former site of the central bridge. According to legend, Li Kan, a scholar of Daguan B&B in Song Dynasty, donated money to build this bridge. Because of its official name Ren Zhongshu, it is called Zhongshu Bridge. In the Song Dynasty, abandoning a secondary vocational school was just an empty vocational school with no rights. Not far away is a raft boat to attract business, and the boatman sits lazily in the shade to enjoy the cool. The carving on the gate of Likeng is relatively simple, and it is also a three-bay room according to common sense. It can be seen at a glance that it was established for the development of tourism in recent years. Seeing Wenchang Tower from a distance still feels a little old. Entering the courtyard where Wenchang Tower is located, I suddenly felt very boring when I looked at the brand-new wooden door. I reached out and touched the pillar, which was cement, and I was even more disappointed.

I haven't seen many staff members in the tower, and several counters have placed fortune-telling and feng shui books of Taiji Bagua. It seems that the scenic spot is not very concerned about this antique building that is not in the core scenic spot. The so-called Wenchang, that is, Yunwen enjoys communication and education prosperity, and is also the official name of the star. We also call it "Wenquxing". Scholars in all previous dynasties had star officials who worshipped Wenquxing, and there were Wenchang Pavilion or Wenchang Tower in many places. I have been to Goose Lake College before, and Wenchang Pavilion once stood. It can be seen that ancient literati attached importance to Wenchang Pavilion, which was connected with the Confucian Temple. It is said that Li Keng, who plowed fields and firewood, fished and studied, produced more than 100 officials and rich families, and nearly 30 works handed down from generation to generation by China people in the village. Wenchang star's admiration is naturally not low, but it's a pity that most people in this world pay little attention to human talent.

wenchangge

When passing by the Buddhist temple, I didn't see any monks stationed in the temple, only vendors selling incense and tourists worshipping Buddha. This is also a modern antique building, resting on the top of the mountain. There is a brand-new Huizhou antique building complex in front of the core scenic spot, which is an empty commercial street. There are not many shops opened, which may be newly built.

Buddhist temple

Walking out of the antique commercial street and turning a corner will be very lively. What I suddenly saw was the ancient Huizhou folk houses, with white walls mottled with black and gray, and the high horse head wall was particularly conspicuous. A small river flowing down from the mountain divides the village into two parts, and the houses are built in turn along the terrain, with a good sense of hierarchy, realizing the unity of mountains and rivers and people, which is similar to the concept of harmony between man and nature that China people have been pursuing.

The development history of Huizhou architecture is closely related to the rise of Huizhou merchants.

Huizhou is located in the southern mountainous area of Anhui Province. Historically, the population of the Central Plains moved south many times, and some of them settled in Huizhou. They often live in groups, bringing the clan culture of the Central Plains to Huizhou, blending with the local culture and forming a unique Huizhou culture.

Li Hang

However, with the increasing immigrant population, it is difficult for Huizhou, which was originally mountainous and vast, to support so many people by farming, so some people have to go out to work and do business in order to survive, and Huizhou merchants were born.

Huizhou people who live together naturally regard blood and clan as the capital of doing business, and they really need to get together from ethnic groups to keep warm in a foreign land. Finally, together with Chaoshang merchants and Shanxi merchants, they are called the three major business gangs in the history of China.

Their main industries include salt, tea, pawn, timber and so on. , as well as food, silk, stationery and so on.

In ancient farming society, it was the established policy of successive dynasties to emphasize agriculture and restrain commerce. According to the order of "scholar, agriculture, industry and business", "business" is in the last position.

When Huizhou merchants get rich, they often choose to go back to their hometowns to buy fields and return their money and capital to the land. At the same time, they will build houses on a large scale, either for their old age or for their future generations, or "they will always come back to build houses if they are not fully loaded."

I think commercial trade is accompanied by cultural exchanges and conflicts, and Huizhou folk houses inevitably absorb some factors of architecture in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, including Yangzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other places where Huizhou merchants gather. These factors are combined with the local characteristics of Huizhou, forming the distinctive Huizhou folk houses today.

Wenchangge hospital

The site selection of Huizhou villages practiced the ancient popular concept of geomantic omen, and chose the back of the mountain and the water, realizing the pattern of negative yin and yang.

The same is true of Likeng. Every household, especially the house near the river, is open to the water. The ancients believed that water was also a symbol of wealth. Running water into the village means that wealth enters the village, but water always flows downwards, so it is necessary to "lock" the running water to prevent wealth from flowing away. The usual practice is to build a small bridge across the water downstream of the village entrance and build a weather corridor on it, which is a visual "lock".

When I first entered the scenic spot, the small bridge I saw felt like a sprinkler. When I entered the core scenic spot, there was also a sprinkler, which should be the original sprinkler of Likeng.

Walking on the stone road, the horse-headed walls erected by Huizhou folk houses are arranged layer by layer along the mountain, which is very layered.

Its three-level horsehead wall is covered with blue tiles, shaped like a horse's mane. From a distance, it really looks like a horse running between Mazai Mountain. There are many tourists on the road, if not in twos and threes, they are tourists wearing travel agency hats. Students who draw sketches with sketchboards on their backs have also become scenic spots in the scenic spots. With a little ink, a gable can be outlined with a few strokes.

Huizhou matouqiang

The clear sound of water was not drowned by the noisy crowd around. When you listen quietly, you will still hear the sound of running water hitting the round pebbles, like a lovely tongue. A few stone slabs were built into a small bridge with dried vegetables or some grains from villagers. The tourists in the city were obviously surprised and took out their cameras to continue shooting.

Several houses by the river are being renovated or newly built, with log-colored columns and brick walls mixed with cement. Many ancient building techniques have been abandoned. Some houses have obvious stratification between the top floor and the wall below. The original two or three-story Huizhou houses have added floors to facilitate better profits. Since the development of tourism in Wuyuan, many ancient villages like Likeng have been illegally rebuilt in the process of operation, which has destroyed the original appearance of many ancient buildings, and this destruction is irreversible.