Tunxi Ancient Street

Located at the center of Tunxi District, Huangshan, with a length of 1273 meters, Tunxi Ancient Street is famous for its traditional Hui-style buildings. The essential part of the street covers straight street, three bystreets and 18 alleys lined up with over 300 Hui-style buildings.

Known as the living Qingming Scroll (a painting shows people’s daily life in the capital city of Song Dynasty), Tunxi Ancient City is a well-preserved walking street with the architectural style the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1636-1912) Dynasties. The buildings in the street are in typical Hui-style decorated with gray tiles, exquisite wood carvings, white walls, and horse-head double eaves on the roofs.

The history

In history, Tunxi was a wharf that lies on the junction of Xin’an River, Hengjiang River and Lvshui River. In the west part of the street, there is a right-angled shape row, which is the birthplace of Tunxi Ancient Street originally called Ba Ji Zhan. In Song Dynasty, the Huizhou merchants who did business outside constructed their hometown in Song style. A famous Huizhou merchant built 47 stores in the street in late Yuan (1206-1370) and early Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Now the street is scattered with typical Hui-style buildings of Song and Ming dynasty, hence the name “Song Street”.

Enjoy the street

Strolling around the street, visitors can appreciate the traditional style of China’s ancient street during fifteenth century. There are antique shops, medicine shops, steelyard stores, teahouses, restaurants and galleries stand in the street. Chinese "Four Treasures of the Study", traditional Hui-style paintings, wood blocks, rubbings, bonsai can be found everywhere along the street. The shops, workshops and residences have continued to maintain the characteristics and operational layout of ancient stores such as "shop in the front and workshop or house in the back". Surrounded by many beautiful and elegant arts, the Tunxi Ancient Street is a shopping paradise for tourists to buy keepsakes with rich Chinese culture and a must-see place on the way to visiting Yellow Mountains.

Main scenic spots

With a history of more than 500 years, Tunxi Ancient Street still remains its original styles, in which shops and stores continue to use the same methods of production, display and operation as they did in ancient times.

Tunxi Museum

Located at the No.168 Tunxi Ancient Street, Tunxi Museum has three theme exhibitions-the exhibition of tile carving of ancient Huizhou, the exhibition of Hui people and the exhibition of the Ming and Qing furniture. The museum mainly displays the tile carving art, painting art, furniture styles and the local customs of ancient Huizhou.

Wan Cui Lou (pavilion with many treasures)

Covering an area of 2,000 square meters, Wan Cui Lou is a well combination of residential house, garden and store with Hui-style. Built in 1996 with four storeys, the magnificent and elegant pavilion decorated with caesious eaves tiles, white corbie ables, ornamental perforated windows, red columns and upturned eaves. The building takes 4 storeys. The first floor displays 900 inkstones and sells Chinese writing brushes, ink sticks, ink slabs and papers. The second storey mainly shows the historical relics and artworks, including porcelains, calligraphies and paintings of celebrities, deadee of ancestors and so on. The third floor is master’s living room in traditional Hui-style. The top storey the roof of Hui garden is scattered with bonsais, fishpond, rockery, trees and flowers.

Tunxi Ancient Street has become a tourist destination for visitors who want to appreciate the ancient buildings of Ming and Qing style and learn more about Hui culture and Chinese culture.