Sansui County 三穗县

History

A county called Qiongshui (邛水县) was first set up here in 1107 under the Song. It was renamed Anding (安定县) under the Yuan in 1279, and in 1414 its Ming-era chiefdom was placed under Zhenyuan prefecture (镇远府). Qiongshui became a county again in 1913, was called Lingshan (灵山县) from 1924 and took the name Sansui, "three ears", in 1927, after a rice plant near the county seat said to have borne three ears of grain. Sansui is the home town of general Yang Zhicheng (杨至成), whom the county describes as the father of the People's Liberation Army's logistics.

What to see

Guidong scenic area (贵洞景区) in Jiepai Village (界牌村), Bagong Town (八弓镇), became a national 4A scenic area in 2023. It combines a large bamboo forest, karst caves, a stone-built village, an old post road, trilobite fossils and traditional papermaking. Podong scenic area (颇洞景区), a 3A site, centres on Podong Village (颇洞村), Tailie Town (台烈镇), 10 km south-west of the county seat.

Muliang (木良) in Tonglin Town (桐林镇) is a Dong village where, until the 1990s, houses were built of fir boards joined without nails; it holds a Duanwu dragon-boat race. The Sansui intangible heritage exhibition hall (三穗县非物质文化遗产陈列馆) presents 19 heritage items and has three craft workshops. On the second day of the second lunar month, Miao villagers of Zhaitou (寨头村) in Tailie gather at a bridge over the Shiping River (石坪河) for the bridge festival (祭桥节), provincial intangible heritage since 2009.

Food and local products

Sansui duck (三穗鸭) is a national geographical-indication product. Other local foods named by the county include huijianba (灰碱粑), Xuedong rice tofu (雪洞米豆腐), chilli rice noodles, duck in blood sauce (血酱鸭) and rice from Liangshang (良上).

Bamboo weaving, mainly in Bagong and Wazhai (瓦寨), goes back to the late Ming or early Qing and was put on Guizhou's intangible-heritage list in 2007; a Wazhai bamboo hat was presented to US president Richard Nixon as a state gift. Papermaking from white bamboo and lime in Guidong and other Bagong villages, which the Yang family has practised since settling in Guidong in the Ming Hongwu period, was listed in the same year.

Getting oriented

Sansui sits between Tongren (铜仁) and Kaili (凯里) in Guizhou and Huaihua (怀化) in Hunan. The Shanghai–Kunming high-speed railway has a station here, and the Shanghai–Kunming, Sansui–Liping and Sansui–Shibing expressways meet at the county town.

Highlights

• Guidong scenic area 贵洞景区: National 4A scenic area since 2023, with bamboo forest, karst caves and traditional papermaking.
• Muliang Dong village 木良: Dong village of fir-board houses joined without nails, in Tonglin Town.
• Sansui duck 三穗鸭: National geographical-indication product.
• Wazhai bamboo hats 瓦寨斗笠: Bamboo weaving listed as Guizhou intangible heritage in 2007; a hat was given to Richard Nixon as a state gift.