Huizhou Ancient City (Shexian)

National 5A Tourist Attraction; One Of The Four Best Preserved Ancient Cities In China · Huangshan, Anhui

The administrative capital of Huizhou for a thousand years, and the town that gave its name to a whole culture: Huizhou merchants, Huizhou architecture, Huizhou cuisine, and the white walls with black-tiled horse-head gables that define the look of southern Anhui. Shexian was where the salt and tea money came home to, and where the prefecture was governed, so it has what the famous villages nearby do not - a full walled city with gates, a prefectural yamen rebuilt on its Ming foundations as a working museum of Chinese provincial government, and above all the memorial arches. The Xuguo Stone Archway of 1584 is the extraordinary one: a four-sided arch with eight pillars and sixteen carved lions, the only one of its kind in the country, put up by a grand secretary who is supposed to have talked the emperor into permitting it. Doushan Street preserves merchant houses with carved brick gateways, and the Tangyue arches stand in a row outside town. The streets are free; the halls are ticketed.

Huicheng Town, Shexian County, Huangshan, Huangshan, Anhui, China

Ancient city streets free and open; the ticketed halls daily about 8:00-17:00, extended to a 7:30 opening on major public holidays. No advance booking is required.

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