Chuandixia Village

National Famous Historical And Cultural Village; Ming And Qing Clan Settlement Of Some Seventy Courtyard Houses Tiered Up A Hillside In Mentougou · Beijing, Beijing

Ninety kilometres west of Tiananmen, up a mountain road in Mentougou, a village of about seventy courtyard houses is stacked in tiers against a hillside, one roof above another, built by a single clan of the Han surname Han who settled here in the Ming dynasty on the old post road to Shanxi. Nothing much happened to Chuandixia afterwards, which is why it survives: the grey brick walls, the carved screen walls inside the gates, the stone lanes and the timber lattice windows are the real Ming and Qing article rather than a reconstruction. Two details stay with people. The first character of the name, cuan, takes thirty strokes to write and villagers will cheerfully teach you the rhyme they use to remember it. The second is the painted slogans from the Cultural Revolution still legible on courtyard walls, left where they were, so that a five-hundred-year-old village carries the 1960s across its face.

Zhaitang Town, Mentougou District, Beijing, Beijing, China

The village is lived in and its lanes are open at all hours; the ticket office at the entrance keeps roughly 8:00-18:00 and charges a modest admission. DAY VISITORS FROM BEIJING ARRIVE FROM ABOUT 10:30 AND LEAVE BY 16:30 - before and after that it is quiet, which is the argument for an overnight stay in a courtyard homestay. Homestay meals must be ordered ahead. Some homestays close in deep winter, and the mountain road in is slow and winding, so avoid arriving after dark.

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