Courtyard Dream House Adventure (August 4)

Hongcui

This morning we got up fairly early and had a quick breakfast. We got a taxi to our next adventure location and this one promised to provide us with lots of visits to Courtyard Houses. Our destination was Hongcui 宏村. This ancient village (now famous as a World Heritage Site since 2000) was built during the Ming and Qing Dynasties and has many really great residences from that period. It was founded by a general (Wang Wen) in 1131. The Wang family was, surprise, the dominant family in the town. Check out Hongcui with us.

This is a commercially prosperous tourist attraction with all the bells and whistles that means. Lots of touts. Lots of stuff to buy. Nice restaurants all over the place. The actual entrance to the town is over a bridge on a serene lake.

Green Butterfly who decided to pose for me

A view of Hongcui

The Hongcui bridge

Art students taking advantage of the beauty

An Old door

Huzhou style buildings

A couple of wooden heads advertising good food, I think

Local fried chicken but the lady asked me not to take a picture . . oops

More local cuisine

Down and ancient alley

Huizhou entranceway

Another ancient doorway

Need directions

Very nice hostess for a new restaurant

Can't help taking pictures - Oval door

A local resident

Another narrow alley

Painting the scene

As you can see, the village is really well done. The people in the village are used to having lots of people visit and are friendly and cheerful. The village is authentic with very little obvious renovations or new constructions. This is as good an ancient town as we had visited. I probably took more than 400 photographs during our four hour visit. Enough photographs and enough visiting courtyard houses. We must get back to our hotel and prepare for our return to Chengdu. But first, a visit to the local tea market.

Buying Tea in Tunxi

If you are interested in tea, check out my tea blog at http://chinateatravels.blogspot.com/. I have not blogged tea for a while but I will soon get back to tea blogging. When we travel, we always look for tea.

Famous flower green tea. It opens up like a flower in a pot of hot water

The Tunxi Tea Market

More taiping houkuei tea

World famous Huangshan maofeng green tea