Nanping Village is sited in the southwest of Yixian County in Huangshan City, Anhui Province, China. It has a history of almost one thousand years. There are about 300 ancient Hui-style houses and buildings built in Ming and Qing Dynasties, as well as 36 ancient wells and 72 lanes. The most distinctive buildings in the village should be the ancestral temples complex. Along the two-hundred-meter central axis in the village, there are eight ancient ancestral halls in different size, which is quite strange, as it is hard to find that there are so many ancestral halls in such a small place. So it is also known as “The Museum of Ancient Ancestral Hall in China”. There are about 1000 residents in the villages so far.
Nanping Village are sites where many of the scenes in the popular movies Ju Dou (the first Chinese film that was nominated for best foreign language film in Oscar.) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (The movie won four Oscars at the 73rd annual Academy Awards. It is also the first Chinese movie that won Oscar) were filmed. Xuzhi Hall provided 80% of the settings for the movie Ju Dou, and The Aancestral Temple of the Ye’s provided some of the settings for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The Story of Western Garden was filmed in this village as well.
Walking into the village, you will surely be attracted by the traditional houses and old-fashioned decorations, such as the stone-carved windows and wood-carved beams and columns, whitewashed walls, grey tiles, mottled wooden doors, etc. In the north of Nanping Village is a river and in the south are mountain peaks. The main entrance of the village is sited in the northeastern corner. To enter the village, you need to walk through a bridge called Wasong Bridge. And once visitors purchase entrance tickets, there will be a tour guide guiding you to tour around the village. The tour guide has keys to the old houses in the village, so only you tour with the tour guide can you have the chance to visit the inside structure of the houses. You can tour around the village with tour guide first, then wonder the village by yourself.
There are quite a few photography locations in the village to take find pictures. One is at the entrance of Nanping Village, where you can accommodate the field, old houses and distant hills afar into the photos. It looks quite beautiful in April when rape flowers bloom in the fields. The second shooting site would be the pine tree forest called Wan Song Lin. There is a large area of old trees and it offers photographic effect in the early morning. The third recommended shooting sites would be the rooftop of the residential buildings, where the balcony of the house is transformed to view platform and visitors can overlook the whole village. But you may have to pay the permit to get in to the house.
Travel Guide
【Chinese name】: 南屏村
【Best time to visit】: April to June & September to early November would be the best time to visit Huangshan city, when it is neither too hot nor too cold, and the view is beautiful too.
【How to get there】: Taka a bus at Tunxi Bus Station to reach Yixian County first, then transfer to a bus to Xiwu County from Yixian Station and get off outside Nanping Village, which is then a walk of only one kilometer.