Xinye Village
A Nationally Listed Historic Village Of The Ye Clan, Settled In The Thirteenth Century And Laid Out On Bagua And Water Principles, With About 200 Ming And Qing Buildings And 16 Ancestral Halls · Jiande, Zhejiang
Eight hundred years of one family in one village, laid out on principles a Song dynasty geomancer would recognise. The Ye clan settled this hollow in the Zhejiang hills in the thirteenth century and built outward from a central pond with the Tuanyun Pagoda and Wenchang Pavilion on the axis, the ancestral hall at the head of the water, and the lanes running so that every house faces the pond and the hill behind - a bagua and water arrangement that means the village still reads as a single designed object rather than an accumulation. There are around two hundred Ming and Qing buildings, sixteen ancestral halls, whitewashed gables and black tile, and almost none of it is a shopfront, because Xinye is a working farming village that has not been converted. Residents dry rice and rape seed in the courtyards, the halls are used for clan business, and on the ninth day of the third lunar month the village holds an ancestor ceremony with a Wu opera troupe that has been running for centuries.
Xinye Village, Damu Township, Jiande, Jiande, Zhejiang, China
Village open daily, generally 8:00-17:00, with the lanes themselves effectively open at all hours because people live there. Ancestral halls and interpretive buildings keep the ticketed hours. Sometimes sold on a COMBINATION TICKET with neighbouring Zhuge Bagua Village. The third lunar month ancestor ceremony with Wu opera is the village's own event and runs to its own dates. Rape flower season is late March to early April and is the busiest fortnight.