Wuyuan Villages
Huizhou Style Heritage Villages Among Terraced Rapeseed Fields · Wuyuan, Jiangxi
A county of Huizhou-style villages in the green hills of northeastern Jiangxi, often called the most beautiful countryside in China, where whitewashed houses with black-tiled, horse-head gables sit beside stone bridges, ancestral halls and terraced fields. Wuyuan belonged for more than a thousand years to the old Huizhou prefecture, the home of merchant clans whose wealth built the finely carved mansions still standing here, and it is the ancestral home of the Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi. In March and early April the terraced hillsides blaze yellow with rapeseed flowers, most famously at Jiangling, where the terraces tumble down toward the village. Huangling, a hillside village reached by cable car, is known for shaiqiu, the harvest custom of drying red chillies, yellow chrysanthemums and corn on round bamboo trays hung from the windows, a patchwork of colour at its most vivid in autumn. Along the rivers lie Likeng with its canal-side lanes and merchant houses, Wangkou and its intricately carved ancestral hall, misty Xiaoqi among old camphor trees, the Song-dynasty covered Rainbow Bridge at Qinghua, and the mansions of Sixi and Yancun. The villages are spread across a wide area and are best linked by bus, car and a multi-day pass.
Huangling Scenic Area, Wuyuan County, Shangrao, Wuyuan, Jiangxi, China
Village sights open daily, roughly 7:30-17:30 (check); Huangling is open later on some nights. Shuttles from Wuyuan station run about 7:30-17:00.