Mulihong Village 木梨硔

About Mulihong Village

Mulihong Village (木梨硔) is a mountain hamlet of Huizhou-style houses on the slope of Kuzhu Jian (苦竹尖), belonging to Huaqiao village (花桥村) in Xikou town (溪口镇), Xiuning County, Huangshan City (黄山市), Anhui.

Mulihong sits on a ridge with sheer drops on three sides. Chinese Wikipedia puts it at more than 800 m and describes it as Huangshan City's highest village, and the only one there still lacking a road; the traditional-architecture platform of Hefei University of Technology (合肥工业大学) gives its height as close to 1,000 m. Its 52 households and 166 residents are mostly surnamed Zhan (詹), and they live from forestry and tea, with a few terraced plots of rapeseed and rice.

The village dates from the late Ming; Wikipedia gives the fifteenth year of the Wanli reign, 1587. Every house is in the Huizhou (徽州) style, whitewashed with grey tiles, and the rows step up the slope from south to north. Seen from the hill opposite, which villagers call Qianshan (前山, "the front hill") and plant with tea and bamboo, the whole settlement has the outline of a camel. On 26 August 2013 it entered the national register of Chinese Traditional Villages, in its second round of listings.

Cloud seas form here on roughly a third of the days in a year. Large numbers of photographers began to come after photographs by a local teacher, Wang Hongxing (汪红兴), won an award in 2009, and it is now one of Huangshan City's hundred best photography spots, visited for clouds, sunsets and night skies. Almost every family runs a guesthouse. Cars cannot reach the village: the last stretch is a climb of 800 stone steps from the road junction at Zhanjiashan village (詹家山村).

What to look for

• The terraced rows of white-walled, grey-tiled Huizhou houses climbing the ridge
• The viewing platform on the hill opposite, which takes in the whole camel-shaped village
• Cloud seas, which appear on about a third of the days in a year
• Sunsets and starry night skies from the ridge
• The 800 stone steps up from the Zhanjiashan road junction
• Tea bushes and bamboo planted on Qianshan, the hill facing the village

Location & getting there

Getting to Mulihong Village

• Search for 木梨硔 with 黄山市 and 休宁县.