Tourism Characteristics of Houxi Ancient Town

The ancient town of Houxi has beautiful scenery, and Zhong Ling is beautiful, with green water passing through the town. The mountains on both sides of the water are beautiful, and the famous Sanhu Mountain is reflected in the river, which has the charm of Guilin landscape. Cruise in the river by boat, and you can clearly see the deep river bottom. From time to time, there are boats passing by on the water, and the fishermen boating sing a long-standing Houxi fishing song, with melodious tunes rippling in the valley and on the water. Changtan has beautiful scenery, picturesque scenery and rugged rocks, and is known as the Little Lijiang River. There are four seasons like spring, fruit trees everywhere, and rich products. Natural scenery and human landscape make people linger and become famous cultural relics and tourist attractions.

Houxi used to be the main road of land and water transportation in history. Land official roads can pass through Youyou and Mawang to Youyang, and waterways can enter Dongting Lake in Hunan and connect with laifeng county in Hubei. Agricultural and sideline products such as tung oil and raw lacquer produced in Houxi area are shipped out by water, and cloth, cotton yarn and department stores are shipped back from Hunan. Because of the convenient waterway transportation, Houxi has become a large-scale cargo distribution center of Youshui River, and merchants from all over the world have established temples and halls here, making the scale of Houxi ancient town bigger and bigger. Once the market was prosperous and the goods were smooth.

Before the Qing Dynasty, Houxi followed the toast system for a long time. After the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court carried out the policy of "changing the land to the stream", that is, changing the chieftain system into the floating official system, and foreign officials began to enter. Due to years of war and famine in Sichuan, the population dropped sharply, and the Qing government carried out large-scale immigration. Immigrants in Houxi area mainly come from Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei, forming three surnames: Tian, Peng and Bai. The most popular families in Houxi have ancestral halls as places for clan discussion and gathering. Up to now, Baijia Ancestral Temple, Xinzhai Baijia Ancestral Temple and Jia Peng Ancestral Temple, which were built in Xianfeng to Guangxu years, are basically well preserved. On the left side of the gate of Baijia Ancestral Temple in Xinzhai, there is also a stone tablet carved in Guangxu for twenty-five years, which is engraved with strict clan family rules and moral norms, and is a precious material for studying clan ancestral temple culture.