Hongcun Keeps Its Heritage Alive Through Ancient Waterworks and New Livelihoods

Ancient waterworks meet the needs of a living village

When heavy rain forced many scenic areas in the region to close and evacuate visitors in 2024, Hongcun in Yixian County stayed open. Its network of channels, Moon Pond and South Lake helped carry water through the settlement, showing how an old village design still serves the people who live there.

Hongcun and nearby Xidi, in the hills of southern Anhui, joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2000. Their value lies in more than white walls, black tiles and finely carved houses. Their streets, buildings and water systems preserve the shape of traditional rural communities, while residents continue to work, maintain homes and welcome visitors.

Autumn makes that connection between beauty and everyday life easy to see. Strings of red chili and trays of corn dry on wooden racks in courtyards and along rooftops. The seasonal practice, known as shai qiu, brings bright color to a village whose architecture otherwise recalls an ink painting.

Visitors stop to watch and take photographs. For local families, drying the harvest remains a practical task tied to centuries of farming knowledge. The village changes with the season, filling with color before returning to its quieter palette.

Hongcun now faces a task shared by many historic settlements: keeping its buildings and traditions intact while making room for viable livelihoods. People returning from cities are guiding tours and opening small businesses. Newcomers are settling in, too. Their presence helps sustain a community that needs both careful conservation and reasons for people to stay.

What UNESCO recognizes in Hongcun and Xidi

UNESCO's World Heritage list recognizes Xidi and Hongcun for preserving the appearance and life of traditional settlements outside cities that have disappeared or changed elsewhere. The street layouts, relationships between houses and water, and delicate decorative arts are central to that recognition.

Integrity and authenticity are important parts of their heritage value. In simple terms, integrity concerns whether the important parts of a historic place remain together, while authenticity concerns whether those parts still faithfully express its history and character. In these villages, that includes the layout of lanes and houses as well as the craft visible in individual buildings.

Streams and pools help shape both settlements. Their architecture reflects local skills and the influence of scholar officials who returned home after careers in government and trade. They brought preferences for orderly layouts and Confucian values, which became part of the built environment.

Many surviving features date from the 14th to the 20th centuries. Plain exterior colors sit alongside intricate carving, while gables, courtyards, lanes and water features create the visual balance associated with an ink painting. Food traditions, medicine and local handicrafts also form part of the cultural life preserved here.

Official protections and management plans seek to retain the villages' spatial patterns and ways of life while managing tourism and development. Legal protection alone is only one part of that work. Active management, economic activity and attention to residents' daily needs also support lasting preservation.

A landscape reflected in the village plan

Hongcun's layout begins with its setting. Traditional villages in this region tend to stand at the foot of a hill, set back from a river. Builders used local timber, brick, tile and stone, creating settlements closely connected to the surrounding terrain.

Feng shui helps explain this approach to choosing sites and arranging buildings. Here, practical decisions about hills, water and shelter sit alongside beliefs about a harmonious relationship between people and their surroundings. French architects and urban designers studying these villages describe a morphogeographic logic, meaning a layout shaped by landforms and water.

Hongcun is also said to resemble a resting ox when seen from above. Leigang Mountain forms its backbone, two ancient trees represent the horns, bridges resemble hooves, and clusters of houses make up the body.

The image reflects the ox's place in agricultural life as a symbol of diligence and prosperity. It connects the village plan to respect for farming and the land, a theme also expressed in local architecture and rituals.

How water moves through Hongcun

Hongcun's channels connect ponds and courtyards in a network built around intake, circulation, storage and discharge. Water enters from higher ground, moves toward Moon Pond in the center of the settlement, continues to South Lake and then flows back to the stream.

Local caretakers maintain the channels and inlets. This work keeps the system functioning as a route for water through the village. The network slows and carries away stormwater, reduces sediment and helps protect paths and building foundations.

The heavy rain in 2024 gave that design a practical test. While many scenic areas nearby closed and evacuated visitors, Hongcun remained open. Its connected waterworks, supported by maintenance, helped the village cope with the wet conditions.

Individual houses contribute to the same approach. A traditional Huizhou saying, four waters return to the hall, describes roofs that slope inward so rain falls toward a central patio. Some water is stored for household use. The remainder passes through carved stone spouts into lanes and then enters the village channels.

Patios also bring daylight and air into deep, narrow homes. Before modern plumbing, this arrangement conserved water, cooled interiors and helped carry wastewater away. The house and the village worked together: the patio managed water at home, while the channels moved it through the wider settlement.

Houses built for safety, privacy and meaning

Horse head gables give Hongcun's roofline its distinctive stepped profile. These masonry walls rise above the roofs and serve a practical purpose in a village where many buildings have timber frames. They act as fire sealing walls, slowing the spread of flames from one house to another.

High walls and small upper windows also reflect security needs. Men often traveled for trade, and the design helped protect the homes they left behind. The central patio, adapted from the northern courtyard, brought light, air and water into the middle of the house while providing space for family life.

Wood, brick and stone carving, collectively known as the Three Carvings, decorate lintels, beams, screens and doorways. Their scenes and motifs express wishes for virtue, longevity and good fortune. The details make a building a place of meaning as well as shelter.

Names carry similar messages. Lexu Tang, the Hall of Joyous Orderly Discourse, joins ideas of joy and reason. Its name reflects the moral language embedded in local architecture, where learning and harmony could be expressed through both a building's identity and its decoration.

The people responsible for keeping heritage alive

Fire safety teams patrol the lanes and check alarms in houses that are centuries old. Conservators clean, repair and explain ancestral halls, which hold a village's shared memory. These regular tasks connect the preservation of historic buildings to the safety and knowledge of the community.

Local authorities set aside a portion of ticket revenue for a dedicated protection fund. That money provides an important source of support for repairs that private owners might find difficult to pay for themselves. No percentage or total amount was given.

Professor He Keren of the China Central Academy of Fine Arts first studied Huizhou villages decades ago. Recalling that experience, she described how practical choices, spiritual beliefs and skilled craftsmanship came together:

Their overall layouts were closely integrated with traditional feng shui culture and ecological concepts. The exquisite architectural techniques and artistry were truly treasures of Chinese civilization, deeply moving us young students at the time.

He also points to the departure of young people for cities as a challenge to village life. As populations declined, fewer people remained to maintain houses, and less money was available for upkeep. Preserving a settlement therefore depends on livelihoods and a sense of belonging as well as repairs.

Hongcun's guides, business owners, maintenance workers and residents all have a part in that effort. A house that remains occupied needs to function as a home, while an ancestral hall needs both physical care and people who can explain its place in community life.

New residents and returning villagers find a place

Armin Schober and his wife, a couple from Austria and China, settled in Hongcun after visiting. They opened a homestay and a small cafe. For Schober, a co owner of the business, the old building was itself a reason to stay:

This ancient house tells a lot of stories, and that is what makes it special. It sparks my imagination about what life was like 200 years ago.

Their move illustrates how a historic house can support a new livelihood while remaining connected to its past. New residents join people returning from cities in giving old buildings an active role in the village.

In neighboring Xidi, a homestay owner who grew up there described a similar commitment to his hometown. His aim was to help raise its profile while protecting the qualities that make it special:

I was born in 1986, the year when tourism started to develop in Xidi. I always feel proud as a local and want to make a contribution to the development of my hometown.

The villages' recent story includes several milestones that connect tourism, recognition and continuing use:

• 1986: Tourism began developing in Xidi, the year the local homestay owner was born.
• 2000: Hongcun and Xidi were inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
• 2024: Hongcun stayed open during heavy rain that led many scenic areas in the region to close and evacuate visitors.

Each milestone concerns a different part of village life. Tourism creates opportunities for work, heritage recognition supports protection, and functioning infrastructure helps residents and visitors continue using the settlement.

Welcoming visitors without turning village life into a performance

Hongcun's lanes and courtyards appeared in Ang Lee's film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The village often receives heavy visitor traffic, bringing attention and spending to a place where people also need to go about their daily lives.

Shai qiu, carved screens and ancestral halls give travelers much to see. The conservation challenge is to make those experiences accessible while keeping the village a real community. Crop drying, for example, remains a household practice even when it attracts cameras.

Studies of visitor perceptions in other Chinese villages find that tourists often connect first with architecture. Emotional connections and an understanding of meaning grow as they learn more. This makes clear storytelling, both in person and online, useful alongside the care of buildings.

Preserving structures and their symbols together helps visitors understand why a carving, a house name or a water channel matters. Keeping heavy commercial signage out of the historic scene and placing residents at the center of planning also helps retain the plain palette, quiet lanes and sound of running water that draw travelers.

Tourism spending can reach beyond the main gate to craftspeople, guides and small inns whose work grows from village heritage. That connection gives conservation an economic role in daily life, rather than leaving it solely as a cost for owners and public authorities.

Where protection and practical support need to meet

Researchers propose the Historic Urban Landscape approach for villages such as Hongcun and Xidi. Despite its name, the approach can help connect cultural and natural values in decisions about historic settlements. It brings together public participation, planning and guidance, legislation and regulation, and finance.

Conservation plans have kept core areas intact. Many traditional houses outside protected lists, however, receive less attention. Owners face high costs, and unsuitable repairs can damage historic materials and workmanship. Protecting prominent halls while supporting the wider fabric of ordinary houses requires attention to both legal coverage and funding.

The proposed measures address those practical needs:

• Survey every traditional building regularly, recording its materials, decay and risks such as moisture and insects.
• Publish clear standards for repairing timber, brick, tile and stone, and require qualified teams for specialist work.
• Extend legal protection to unlisted houses that contribute to the historic setting, alongside famous halls.
• Provide grants and loans with low interest rates for private owners following approved conservation plans.
• Create village councils that include residents, artisans and local businesses so decisions reflect everyday needs.
• Set visitor capacity for narrow lanes and important halls, and stagger visitor movement during peak seasons.
• Train local teams to respond to fire and floods, and maintain channels and roofs as part of managing risk.
• Make the use of tourism revenue transparent, with a share reserved for routine maintenance and documentation.

These proposals link protection to the people responsible for buildings. Repair standards help owners choose suitable work, financial support helps them afford it, and participation gives residents a voice in decisions affecting their homes and businesses.

A nearby museum shows another way to carry memory forward

Fengwu Village, also in Yixian County, offers a related example through its new Rural Memory Museum. Whitewashed walls, timber and tile help the building fit the local setting, while its courtyard arrangement echoes traditional Anhui houses.

The museum serves as a public gathering space and a modern counterpart to an ancestral hall. Exhibits focus on family objects and stories, and rooms accommodate screenings and events. Its design opens outward to invite neighbors in, combining local materials and familiar building ideas with present community needs.

The connection to Hongcun lies in keeping heritage useful. An old home can become a carefully maintained homestay, a water channel can continue carrying rain, and a new public building can give family memories a shared place. Each example ties cultural life to spaces people use.

Scholars studying the sustainability of traditional villages identify recurring strengths: a strong sense of place, shared practices, careful adaptation, rich symbols and social networks. Hongcun expresses those qualities through its water system, house names and seasonal rituals.

Policies supporting the reuse of historic buildings, repairs by owners and community groups can help sustain that fabric. Hongcun's central task remains practical: to stay a place where people live, work and celebrate while welcoming visitors who come to learn from its heritage.

Key Points

• Hongcun and Xidi joined the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2000 for their preserved rural layouts, Huizhou architecture and relationships between buildings and water.
• Shai qiu, the autumn drying of crops, remains part of local farming life while attracting visitors.
• Channels, Moon Pond and South Lake helped Hongcun stay open during heavy rain in 2024.
• Horse head gables slow the spread of fire, while patios provide light, ventilation and a route for rainwater.
• Wood, brick and stone carvings, together with building names, express values and local history.
• Safety teams, ancestral hall conservators and a fund supported by ticket revenue contribute to preservation.
• Returning villagers and new residents are creating livelihoods through tours, homestays, cafes and other small businesses.
• Researchers call for wider protection of traditional houses, clear repair standards, financial support and resident participation.
• Fengwu's Rural Memory Museum shows how local materials, family stories and shared activities can connect heritage with current village life.