Well-preserved ancient villages shaded on the slopes of the green hills of the southern part of east China's Anhui Province are acclaimed by tourists and scholars as the most beautiful villages in the world and a museum of Chinese ancient residences.

As representatives of those beautiful ancient villages, Xidi and Hong villages, both located in Yixian County, were added to the World Cultural Heritage list in 2000. It was the first time that such ancient houses were put on the list.

Well preserved for more than 400 years, Xidi Village enjoys its fame for characteristic ancient architectures with more than 300 buildings with features of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, 122 of which still remain intact.

The topography of Xidi Village is well planned. It is 700 meters from east to west and 300 meters from north to south, and those ancient residential buildings resemble a ship when viewed from a high place.

Each house has white walls with elaborately-shaped eaves and courtyards, the later of which are paved with green flag-stone or colorful pebbles arranged into various designs.

The entrance gates and windows display typical features of local wood, brick and stone carving. Crystal-clear water in the ditches connecting every household provides an endless stream to the housewife for daily life.

The sun and rain over the years have reduced houses in white and black tiles to a grayish white color, which gives a strong sense of remote times in the midst of a green forest.

Located not far from Xidi Village, Hong Village is famous for its enchanting mountains and waters. It is shaped like an ox lying leisurely beside a stream in front of a mountain.

The high ground is like the ox head, the ancient trees at the entrance are like ox horns and bridges are like ox hoofs. The houses form the trunk and the river is like an ox tail. The 1000-meter-long zigzagging ditch is compared to ox intestines, and the Moon-shaped pond, Nanhu lake, takes the shape of an ox stomach.

After being listed as a world cultural heritage, the two villages have been crowded with tourists from home and abroad, which has totally changed the long-time tranquility in villages.

Fortunately, villagers have realized the importance of relic preservation and sincerely contributed to the protection work by themselves. Tourists can easily find that most villagers who still live in the villages carefully look after their own old-aged houses like specialists.

For better preservation of the houses, Hong Village framed a layout to figure out different houses and carry out related protection in 1999.

In order to satisfy the demand of villagers to improve their living standards while not damaging the old-aged houses, the village authorities decided to encourage villagers to build new houses out of the protection area.

In 2002, 179 senior villagers over 60 years old in Xidi Village jointly proposed a public move to call for eternal preservation of their rare heritage, attracting more than 1,000 villagers to attend the ceremony.

To avoid the fire accidents, both villages have installed fire hydrants in the main streets and asked every house to install fire control equipment.

In 2003, the local city government instituted a special regulation stipulating practical causes to guarantee the protection budget and definite responsibilities of officials.

The provincial government has published a regulation to strengthen cracking down on the activities of stealing structural components of ancient houses.

How to handle the contradiction between relic preservation and tourism development has become the challenge faced by the villagers and local governments. But all of them have realized and agreed that any plan should be based on good preservation of ancient houses.
 
(Xinhua News Agency June 8, 2004)