Article and photo  by Yuan PeideI have traveled extensively over half of China in the past twenty years, taking countless beautiful pictures and recording numerous touching stories. But when I found myself in Wuyuan, in what was ancient Huizhou, I was thrilled! It seemed like a fairytale world.  At that moment, I wished I could stay there for some time. In today’s modern world, city people walk about in jungles of reinforced concrete, and old towns, ancient trees, small stone bridges, old houses, and yellowed genealogical tables become the things that they pursue in their spiritual life. And Wuyuan is really this sort of spiritual homestead.
    Wuyuan was the hometown of the renowned philosopher of the Southern Song Dynasty Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi). In the centuries during the Ming and Qing Dinasties, small traders emerged, and the saying “a place without traders from Anhui is incomplete” could be heard all over China. Numerous small traders, after becoming successful in their business, not forgetting to bring honor to their ancestors would do a major repair of their ancestral temple and family house as soon as they returned to their hometown. Thus, there are numerous mountain villages scattered around, the houses with their striking washed walls and black roof tiles. Because the mountainous regions are difficult to access, they have never had too many visitors, and Wuyuan has been able to preserve relatively well to the day the old houses and the people’s simple folk customs. Nowadays, when people first set their sight on it they often call it “China’s prettiest region”!
    Though Wuyuan is a countryside region, it has had a rich history of literature, with talented people emerging generation after generation. Due to the fact that Wuyuan is the origin of almost a thousand outstanding personages that appear in the annals of history and about a thousand works of literature that were once in circulation, the region was often called by the beautiful name of the “hometown of books”. According to historical records, during the many dynasties there were altogether over 2,660 people from Wuyuan that served as civil and military officials. There are also 2,187 literary works originating from the area. Amongst them, 172 were selected for the imperial text collection Siku Quanshu. Though there are too many famous people born in Wuyuan to mention one by one, some of the most influential were the renowned thinker and educator Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi), from the Southern Song Dynasty, the renowned originator of Hui style seal cutting from the Ming Dynasty, the famous economist and phonologist from the Qing Dynasty Jiang Yong, and China’s most outstanding expert on railway engineering Zhan Tianyou, also referred to as “the father of the Chinese railway”.
    On an early March day, we four aficionados drove towards the most captivating of places, Wuyuan. After a five-hour bumpy ride, the modern buildings started to disappear from view. In the early light of the morning, the traditional houses with their upturned eaves, their washed walls and black tiled roofs emerged on both sides of the road... We had arrived to Wuyuan.