Yaxi Old Village 雅溪古村

About Yaxi Old Village

The village covers about 20 square kilometres and has some 429 households and 1,522 residents in thirteen village groups, with 1,654 mu of arable land and 15,486 mu of woodland. Its two well-preserved Hakka enclosures are Fuxing Wei and Yafeng Wei. Quannan County's own introduction, which notes that Hakka people make up more than nine tenths of the county population, records the Yaxi enclosure group, one earth-walled and one stone-walled, as having been placed on China's tentative list for nomination as World Cultural Heritage. Yaxi was entered on the fourth batch of the Chinese Traditional Village register in 2016, listed in 2017 among model beautiful and liveable villages, made a national AAAA scenic area in 2018 and a provincial rural forest park in 2019, and in 2020 was named a national forest village and a national one-village-one-product model village.

The living traditions here are as much the point as the buildings. The making of Hakka leicha, the pounded tea of southern Jiangxi, is a national intangible cultural heritage item and is also inscribed on the UNESCO representative list; blue-kerchief making and the chemadeng lantern performance are provincial items. The village also keeps the incense dragon dance, the lantern dragon dance, the yellow dragon dance and ox-lantern opera, along with a body of family-precept culture including the Yaxi Family Precepts, and poems by Wang Yangming on Dalongbao and Xinxingbao are associated with the place. A protective development scheme of 250 million yuan has added guesthouses and interpretive spaces among the old houses, including a folk-custom hall, a farming-culture hall, a hall of the twenty-four solar terms, the Yaxi Academy and a Wang Yangming teaching hall.

What to look for

• The two Hakka enclosures, Fuxing Wei and Yafeng Wei, the reason the village is on China's World Heritage tentative list.
• The contrast between the earth-walled and the stone-walled enclosure that make up the group.
• The making of Gannan Hakka leicha, a national and UNESCO-listed intangible heritage practice.
• The folk-custom hall, the farming-culture hall and the hall of the twenty-four solar terms set up within the village.
• The Yaxi Academy and the Wang Yangming teaching hall, which pick up the village's family-precept tradition and Wang Yangming's local poems.

Location & getting there

Getting to Yaxi Old Village

Identify the main visitor approach and any separately managed houses, museums or performances. Ask before entering residential spaces or photographing residents.

• Search for 雅溪古村 with 赣州市 and 全南县.