Lixin County 利辛县

Setting and landscape

Lixin lies on the southern part of the Huang-Huai plain (黄淮平原) and has a warm-temperate, semi-humid monsoon climate. The land falls only very gently, a little higher in the north-west and lower in the south-east. The Xifei River National Wetland Park takes in the middle reach of the river together with its ponds and marshes, 958.71 hectares in all, and gained full national wetland park status in the 2020 review.

History

The county government describes the area as contested ground between the states of Wu and Chu in the Spring and Autumn period. The Wu She mound site (伍奢冢遗址) in Sunmiao township (孙庙乡) is held to be the tomb mound of Wu She (伍奢), a Spring and Autumn grandee. It covers about 30,000 square metres, and surface finds collected since 1980 have been identified as late Dawenkou culture, overlain by Eastern Zhou to Han material. It became a provincial protected site on 28 October 2004, and a temple fair is held there on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.

What to see

Zhangou town (展沟镇) keeps the Nine-Bend Yellow River lantern maze (九曲黄河阵), a provincial intangible heritage item since 2009. The maze is laid out on the eight-trigram and nine-palace pattern: a square outline enclosing three rows of three squares, with posts 1.6 metres high and lanes 1.5 metres wide. More than 1,000 small lamps and 365 large ones light it, and the central lanterns show figures from the novel Investiture of the Gods (封神演义). It is set up for the Zhangou temple fair on the fifteenth day of the second lunar month, but only in some years, such as 1953, 1981, 1983, 1997 and 2023. The Zhangou lantern maze was among the first national "one county, one product" examples of distinctive folk art.

Food and local products

Lixin yellow cattle, Lixin Chinese toon (香椿) and Lixin sorghum are all on the national list of distinctive agricultural products, and the toon is the county's first geographical-indication product. The county promotes its own beef-cattle brand. Local specialties featured by the county government include Wangshi braised mutton (王市卤羊肉), the Qiao family's braised-meat rolled flatbread from Kantuan (阚疃乔氏卤肉卷馍) and the Ji family's watermelon sauce from Gaoji (高集季氏西瓜酱).

Getting oriented

The Beijing–Kowloon railway (京九铁路) and the Qingdao–Fuyang railway (青阜铁路) cross the county from north to south, and the Nanjing–Luoyang, Jinan–Guangzhou and Jinan–Qimen expressways pass through. The county town is 45 km from Fuyang airport.

Highlights

• Nine-Bend Yellow River lantern maze 九曲黄河阵: Provincial intangible heritage at Zhangou, laid out on the nine-palace pattern with 365 large lamps.
• Wu She mound site 伍奢冢遗址: Provincial protected site with late Dawenkou and Eastern Zhou to Han finds.
• Xifei River National Wetland Park 西淝河国家湿地公园: 958.71 hectares along the middle reach of the Xifei River.
• Lixin Chinese toon 利辛香椿: The county's first geographical-indication product.