Due to a long history of invasions, famines, civil wars, and more recently, destructive communist social campaigns and breakneck “zombie development” in real estate, many Chinese communities have lost much of their way of life, starting with their spatial and architectural heritage.
But there will always be exceptions. Some villages, by luck or design, have had the fortune to hold out against calamity and modernity to preserve their age-old dwellings and environs. Below are four examples:
Xitang, a 2,500-Year-Old Canal Town
It’s where Tom Cruise leapt onto roofs and vaulted over walls in “Mission Impossible 3.” It’s been visited by beauty pageant contestants. But long before any of that, the town of Xitang in eastern China began its history as a staging ground for a valiant ancient general.
Two thousand five hundreds years ago, China was entering into a 300-year period of civil war, known as the Warring States Period. One of the first and most iconic conflicts in this time was that between the states of Wu and Yue. Xitang was established when the general Wu Zixu dug out a canal to help his troops ferry provisions to the front.
