Known as a "village in a Chinese painting", Hongcun is another UNESCO World Heritage site. It has gained gained international fame as a location for the martial arts epic "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
The village is laid out in the shape of a water buffalo. A nearby hill is interpreted as the head, and two large trees standing on it mark the horns. Four bridges across the stream can be seen as the legs and the houses of the village form the body. Inside the “body”, the many small canals can be seen as the intestines and the moon-shaped ponds as the stomachs.
Hongcun's 150 or so houses are the famous fortified Huizhou courtyard houses. Built to withstand earthquakes as well as attacks by bandits, the tall whitewashed walls with high windows protect the fine carved wood interiors.
Hongcun has a nice dreamy quality about it and its gentle beauty attracts hundreds of Chinese art students who clutter every walkway and open space honing their en plein air sketching skills. A few kilometres away, there is a Painters' Village where artists from all over China are gathered to supply Western hotel chains with industrial quantities of masterly copies of famous European paintings.
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