Atlas of China
Huangshan 黄山Huángshān
Merchant villages, carved ancestral halls and stone archways of old Huizhou
- Type
- City
- Region
- Anhui
- Seat
- Tunxi
- Featured places
- 3
- Listed sites
- 531 rated 5A · 20 rated 4A · 38 national heritage
About Huangshan
Huangshan city covers most of old Huizhou, whose merchants traded across Ming and Qing China and spent their fortunes on carved houses, ancestral halls and stone archways back home. Beyond Huangshan mountain and the UNESCO-listed villages of Hongcun and Xidi lie villages such as Chengkan and Nanping, the seven archways of Tangyue, the Taoist mountain of Qiyun and the old prefectural town of Shexian. In Tunxi, the modern centre, Old Street runs for about a kilometre past Ming and Qing shopfronts.
What to eat in Huangshan
- Fermented mandarin fish (臭鳜鱼)
- Hairy tofu (毛豆腐)
- Keemun black tea (祁门红茶)
Featured places in Huangshan
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Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) 黄山
Granite spires, wind-bent pines and a sea of clouds straight out of an ink painting
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Hongcun Village 宏村
A merchant village planned in the shape of an ox, mirrored in its own pond
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Xidi 西递村
A quieter UNESCO twin of Hongcun: flagstone lanes, merchant houses and a Ming archway
Listed sites in Huangshan
53 listed sites are in Huangshan. These are the 21 rated 5A or 4A; see all 53 in the Anhui list.
- Huizhou Ancient City (Shexian) 徽州古城 5A scenic area · National heritage site
The old town of Shexian (Huicheng), seat of Huizhou prefecture from the Song to the Qing, and the core of the Ancient Huizhou Culture Tourism Zone, whose other parts are Tangyue, Tangmo, Chengkan and the Qiankou Ming houses. - Daguling Gorge 打鼓岭 4A scenic area · on the map
A deep wooded gorge on the Dagu stream in Meixi township, in the mountains of Yi county, where a path climbs through bamboo forest past clear pools such as the Fairy Pool, a 'water-curtain cave' behind a falling spring and the three-tiered Sandie waterfall. - East Huangshan Resort (Huangshan Tea Farm) 东黄山度假区 4A scenic area · on the map
A resort area on the Huangshan Tea Farm at Tanjiaqiao, a state farm that has been run by Shanghai since 1965 and to which large numbers of young people from Shanghai were sent to work in the 1960s and 1970s. - Emerald Valley 翡翠谷 4A scenic area · on the map
A wooded valley in Shancha village below the eastern side of Huangshan, whose stream runs through a chain of clear green pools and small waterfalls. - Former New Fourth Army Headquarters, Yansi 岩寺新四军军部旧址 4A scenic area · National heritage site
The Jin family compound at 22 Yinshan Road in Yansi, used as headquarters by the Communist-led New Fourth Army in the spring of 1938, when guerrilla units from eight southern provinces gathered here to be reorganised before moving to the front against Japan; the commanders Ye Ting and Xiang Ying lived in two of its three houses. - Furong Valley 芙蓉谷 4A scenic area · on the map
A forested gorge on the northern side of Huangshan, where a stream runs through bamboo groves past a chain of green pools and waterfalls. - Guchengyan 古城岩 4A scenic area · on the map
A wooded rise beside the Heng River on the eastern edge of Wan'an town, with a Ming pagoda of the early Jiajing era (1520s), where since 1999 old buildings from around Xiuning county that could not be preserved where they stood have been moved and rebuilt. - Guniujiang: Guanyintang (Qimen side) 牯牛降观音堂 4A scenic area · on the map
The Qimen entrance to Guniujiang, a forested range on the border of Qimen and Shitai counties that continues the Huangshan mountains westwards, rising to 1,727.6 m and protected as a nature reserve since 1982, now a national nature reserve of about 67 km². - Huashan Mysterious Grottoes 花山谜窟 4A scenic area · on the map
A group of 36 large man-made caverns cut into the hills on the south bank of the Jian (Xin'an) River on the eastern edge of Tunxi, unrecorded in any historical source until they were found by chance in 2000. - Lixi Village 历溪 4A scenic area · on the map
An old village in Likou town in northern Qimen, founded in the Southern Tang among tea hills on the Shunxi stream, which rises on the Guniujiang mountains. - Liyang in Lane 黎阳in巷 4A scenic area · on the map
A leisure quarter on the old Liyang street across the Heng River from Tunxi Old Street, redeveloped between 2007 and 2013 around the original street plan and about ten restored Huizhou houses, with new buildings around them. - Mount Qiyun 齐云山 4A scenic area · National heritage site
One of China's four sacred mountains of Taoism, a range of red sandstone (Danxia) cliffs and peaks rising to 585 m west of Huangshan city, where Taoist worship goes back to 758–760 and flourished in the Ming around the cult of Zhenwu, the Perfected Warrior. - Nanping Village 南屏村 4A scenic area · National heritage site
A village of the Ye clan at the foot of a hill west of the Yi county town, founded in the Northern Song, that keeps more than 300 Ming and Qing buildings, eight of them ancestral halls. - Nine Dragon Waterfall 九龙瀑 4A scenic area · on the map
A waterfall described as the largest at Huangshan, which drops 360 m in nine stages over a 600 m course from the cliffs of Xianglu Peak into a U-shaped valley on the eastern side of the mountain, forming nine cascades and nine pools. - Pingshan Village 屏山村 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
A village of the Shu clan on the Jiyang stream north-east of the Yi county town, settled at the end of the Tang, that keeps more than 200 Ming and Qing houses. - Taiping Lake 太平湖 4A scenic area · on the map
A reservoir lake formed in 1970 by damming the Qingyi River, winding between forested hills in Huangshan district over about 88 km²; it was Anhui's first national wetland park. - Xiangyuan Keemun Tea Culture Park 祥源祁红产业文化博览园 4A scenic area · on the map
A tea park devoted to Keemun (Qimen) black tea on the eastern edge of the Qimen county town, built by the Xiangyuan group in new Huizhou-style buildings. - Xieyuda Tea Culture Museum 谢裕大茶文化博物馆 4A scenic area · on the map
The museum of Xieyuda, a producer of Huangshan Maofeng green tea that takes its name from the Shanghai tea house of the 19th-century Huizhou merchant Xie Zheng'an, set in the company's tea expo park at Qiankou. - Xin'an River Scenic Gallery 新安江山水画廊 4A scenic area · on the map
A stretch of the Xin'an River of roughly 50 km through southern Shexian, between steep green hills dotted with Huizhou villages and old wharves, usually seen on boat trips from Shendu. - Xin'an Riverside, Tunxi 新安江滨水旅游区 4A scenic area · on the map
A stretch of the Xin'an River on the eastern side of Tunxi whose banks, once lined with wharves, have been landscaped as riverside parks for walking. - Xiongcun Village and Zhushan Academy 雄村 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
A village of the Cao clan on the Jian River in southern Shexian, listed as a national historic and cultural village in 2014.
Getting to Huangshan
Train, flight and driving times from the cities most visitors come from, with stations, fares and how many run a day; each opens the full comparison.
On the map
Open Huangshan on the illustrated map to see its outline, its places and listed sites together, and to add them to a trip.
Open Huangshan on the map