Xidi is a village that seems to have been left alone by the twentieth century. It lies in Yi county, on the southern side of the Yellow Mountains in Anhui, a landscape of green hills and rice fields where merchants of the Huizhou region made fortunes in salt, tea, timber and ink, and spent them at home on houses. The Hu clan, who founded the village, built lanes of whitewashed, black-tiled houses with high walls, carved wooden screens, small courtyards, and stone-framed doors, and in the sixteenth century they put up a great stone memorial arch in honour of an official of the clan. The name means west stream, after the water that runs through the village in channels beside the lanes.
Xidi and nearby Hongcun are listed together by UNESCO as the Ancient Villages of Southern Anhui, and the result is a living museum. People still live in the houses, hang out washing, cook on the street and sell tea, bamboo shoots and souvenir paper umbrellas. Ang Lee used the area for scenes in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and since then visitors have arrived in numbers. Rise early, or arrive in the late afternoon, and you will see the lanes without a crowd, with mist in the fields and chimneys smoking.
Riding in Anhui is lovely in principle, with roads that wind through bamboo forest and tea terraces to villages with ink-wash views, but the practical position is that foreign riders need Chinese licences and plates, which are hard to arrange. Visitors usually go with a driver or by bus from the town of Huangshan, about thirty-eight kilometres away. Spring brings rapeseed flowers, golden yellow, and mist, and autumn is clear and cool. Summer is hot and rainy, and winter can be cold and damp.
Huangshan is a city of about seventy-seven thousand, and has fuel, hotels, a railway station and the full range of food. In the villages, you can eat Huizhou dishes, such as stinky mandarin fish, bamboo shoots and tofu cooked on a stone griddle. A ticket for Xidi usually includes entry for a number of days, and the same ticket may cover Hongcun, so keep it. Wear shoes with grip for the worn stone, and carry some cash for stalls and small guesthouses.