Xidi Village

Xidi was listed as a World Heritage site in November 2000 together with Hongcun, the first time that dwellings had been put on the list. The village now has 124 old houses and 3 ancestral halls, and its main buildings include the Jing'ai Hall and the Zhuimu Hall. It also has the Hu Wenguang Archway, built in 1578, the sixth year of the Ming Wanli reign, and Daifudi, built in 1691, the thirtieth year of the Qing Kangxi reign. In Huizhou-style buildings in general, the top of the gable wall rises above the roof in steps and is called a horse-head wall. It can keep a fire from spreading, it was first called a fire-sealing wall, and three or four steps are the most common.^1,2

One main road runs east and west through Xidi with a parallel street on each side, and many narrow alleys cross between the three streets; most of the lanes follow the stream, and all are paved with blue stone. The Jing'ai Hall is an ancestral hall of the village, and small open squares lie in front of the Jing'ai Hall, the Zhuimu Hall and the Hu Wenguang Archway. For Huizhou-style buildings in general, a horse-head wall can have from one to five steps, three or four are the most common, and the wall was first called a fire-sealing wall. By wall-head decoration and make, the walls fall into several forms, including the no-seat-head, seal-box, ridge-beast, magpie-tail and court-tablet types.^1,2