Huangshan Old Street

Huangshan Old Street, or Laojie, lies at the heart of what was historically known as Tunxi, the traditional market town that served as the gateway to the Yellow Mountains. The modern name “Huangshan” can be confusing to non-Chinese speakers, as it refers both to the famous mountain range and to the city that administers the surrounding region. In Chinese, Huangshan literally means “Yellow Mountains”, a name bestowed during the Tang dynasty and immortalised by the poet Li Bai. When the area was reorganised in the 1980s, Tunxi was incorporated into the newly created Huangshan City, but the older name remains widely used to distinguish the historic quarter from the broader municipality.

The street’s origins date to the late Song dynasty, but its present appearance reflects the prosperity of the Ming and Qing periods, when Huizhou merchants—enriched by salt, pawnbroking and long-distance trade—returned home to build houses, shops and ancestral halls that proclaimed their success. Walking along Old Street, one immediately notices the distinctive Huizhou architectural style. The buildings are two or three storeys high, their whitewashed walls capped with dark, upturned eaves and crenellated fire-walls. These walls, so characteristic of the region, served both practical and symbolic purposes: they slowed the spread of fire in tightly packed towns, blocked unwelcome draughts, and signalled the wealth and status of the families who built them.

The street itself follows the gentle curve of the Xin’an River, a reminder that Huizhou’s prosperity was built on waterborne trade. For centuries, boats carried tea, ink, timber and ceramics from these inland towns to the great markets of the Yangzi delta. Tunxi became a natural hub, and Old Street its commercial spine. Today, many of the shops still sell the region’s traditional products: the famed Huizhou ink sticks, prized by scholars; delicate Anhui teas; and the carved wooden screens that once adorned merchant mansions.

Yet Old Street is more than a preserved relic. Its narrow lanes, lined with teahouses, pharmacies and small workshops, still echo with the rhythms of daily life. Elderly residents sit beneath the eaves exchanging news; craftsmen demonstrate the slow, deliberate techniques of ink-making; and the scent of sesame cakes drifts from tiny bakeries. The street’s scale—intimate, human, unhurried—stands in marked contrast to the dramatic granite peaks of the Yellow Mountains, yet the two landscapes are deeply connected. The mountains inspired the region’s aesthetic sensibilities; the merchants, enriched by trade, gave those sensibilities material form.

In many ways, Huangshan Old Street encapsulates the Huizhou spirit: industrious, refined and deeply rooted in place. Whether one calls it Tunxi or Huangshan, the street remains a living reminder that the cultural world surrounding the Yellow Mountains was shaped not only by poets and painters, but also by the merchants whose wealth built the villages, halls and streets that still define this remarkable region.