Rucheng County 汝城县

Setting and landscape

The county sits where the middle of the Nanling Mountains (南岭) meets the southern end of the Luoxiao Mountains (罗霄山脉): dense ridges broken by hills and basins, with mountains making up about 82 per cent of the land. The Jiulong River (九龙江) runs to the Bei River (北江) and the Pearl, while other streams feed the Xiang and the Gan; hence the saying "a rooster's crow reaches three provinces, the waters flow to three rivers". The climate is humid subtropical monsoon, with a frost-free season averaging 273 days.

History

The county of Rucheng was created in 358, under the Eastern Jin. It was renamed Luyang (卢阳) in 560 and was called Guiyang (桂阳) from the early Northern Song through the Qing, before taking back the name Rucheng in the early Republic. In the early Song the Neo-Confucian thinker Zhou Dunyi (周敦颐) served as magistrate here; the Lianxi Academy (濂溪书院) was built in his memory.

Rucheng was the first stop of the Central Red Army's Long March in Hunan and the place where it broke through the second blockade line in 1934. At Shazhou Village (沙洲村), three women soldiers lodging with a villager named Xu Jiexiu (徐解秀) cut their only quilt in half and gave her one half when they marched out on 7 November 1934.

What to see

Red tourism centres on Shazhou Village, with the "Warmth of Half a Quilt" (半条被子的温暖) exhibition hall and the site of the Rucheng meeting of the Xiangnan Uprising (湘南起义). The half-quilt site and the second-blockade-line sites at Xiushui Village (秀水村) were listed as Hunan protected monuments in 2019.

The county has more than 900 registered old ancestral halls. The Rucheng ancestral hall group, dating from the Ming to the Republic, and the Ming-dynasty Xiuyi Archway (绣衣坊) with the Fan family temple (范氏家庙) became national key protected sites in 2013.

Rucheng's hot springs reach up to 98°C. Jiulongjiang National Forest Park (九龙江国家森林公园) and the Jiangbeishan Grand Canyon (江背山大峡谷) are used for camping, stream trekking, rock climbing and rafting.

Around the Lantern Festival, more than 120 villages, most famously Yidao (益道), Jinjiang (津江), Houfang (厚坊) and Guang'ansuo (广安所), dance the Rucheng incense-stick dragon (汝城香火龙). It is built from local rice straw, palm leaves and bamboo, with incense sticks set along both sides of the body, and was added to the national intangible heritage list in 2008.

Getting oriented

The county seat is Luyang Town (卢阳镇). The Xiamen–Chengdu (厦蓉) and Wuhan–Shenzhen (武深) expressways and national highways G106 and G357 cross the county.

Highlights

• Shazhou Village 沙洲村: Site of the 1934 "half quilt" story; listed as a Hunan protected monument in 2019.
• Rucheng ancestral hall group 汝城古祠堂群: Ming-to-Republican halls; national key protected site since 2013.
• Lianxi Academy 濂溪书院: Built in memory of Zhou Dunyi, magistrate here in the early Song.
• Rucheng incense-stick dragon 汝城香火龙: Straw, palm-leaf and bamboo dragon set with incense sticks; national intangible heritage since 2008.
• Jiulongjiang National Forest Park 九龙江国家森林公园: Used for camping, stream trekking, climbing and rafting.