Behind the eight-legged archway: Shexian's Doushan Street and the old Huizhou lanes

By mid-morning, loudspeakers on the main street of Huizhou Ancient City are already selling shaobing pastries and walking tours. Step off that street a short walk from the stone archway and the noise thins out. You hear a broom on flagstones, a television behind a wooden door, and water running in a gutter cut into the lane. This is Doushan Street (斗山街, Dǒushān Jiē) in Shexian (歙县, Shè Xiàn), once the seat of a prefecture whose merchants grew rich on salt and tea along the Yangtze. Their descendants still hang washing between the gables.

The archway and the street that faces it

The landmark is the Xuguo Archway (许国石坊, Xǔguó Shífāng), a Ming-dynasty stone gateway that stands on eight legs instead of the usual two or four. It is carved with lions and with the honours of a local official. It stands in the middle of the old town's traffic. Most visitors photograph it, walk under it and carry on along the restored shopping street toward the rebuilt prefectural yamen, the old government office (徽州府衙, Huīzhōu Fǔyá).

That street is pleasant and easy to follow: grey-tiled shopfronts, pastry ovens, tea in paper tins, and electric carts for anyone who would rather not walk. Its job is to take in the day-trippers who come over from Huangshan (黄山), the mountain an hour or so north, and it does that well. The town the merchants actually lived in is behind it. Its lanes branch off at right angles and quickly narrow between whitewashed walls.

Doushan Street, one turn away

Doushan Street is barely wider than a handcart. It is paved in long stone slabs, and the houses on both sides are taller than the lane is wide. Their gable ends rise in steps, in a shape locals call horse-head walls (马头墙, mǎtóu qiáng). They were built as firebreaks between neighbours, and from below they cut the sky into a thin strip. Doorways sit under carved brick hoods (砖雕门罩, zhuāndiāo ménzhào) showing vines, deer and scholars under pine trees, most of them worn soft by rain.

A few of the larger houses are open as exhibits, usually with a ticket desk just inside the door. Most are not. A half-open door here usually means someone is home, and the polite assumption is that what you can see from the lane is as far as the invitation goes.

Inside the houses you can enter, the layout repeats: a tall hall facing a small open courtyard called the tianjing (天井, tiānjǐng), or sky well. All the roofs slope inward, so rain from all four sides falls into the house rather than out of it. Merchant families read that as their fortune staying at home.

四水归堂（sì shuǐ guī táng）：四面屋檐的雨水，都落进自家的天井。

Look up and you will see narrow wooden galleries on the upper floor, with slatted windows that face inward rather than onto the street. Look down and there is often a mossy stone basin in the well, holding a few goldfish or a potted plant. The houses are dim and cool by design, which is welcome in July and much less so in January.

A few hundred years of family come down to doing good; the first of all good things is still to study.

Ink, stone and the shops that sell them

That couplet, carved in one version or another in many Huizhou halls, explains the shops. Shexian gave its name to She inkstones (歙砚, Shè yàn): slabs of dark, fine-grained stone with a shallow well for grinding ink. The region is just as known for Hui ink (徽墨, Huī mò), sticks of pressed pine soot and glue, often moulded with gilt characters. On the old town's quieter streets there are workshops where a carver sits at a bench in the doorway, chisels laid out on a towel and stone dust on their sleeves.

Quality varies far more than the shopfronts suggest. Ask to see the back of a stone, where the grain and any natural markings are easiest to read; flecked and banded varieties each have their own names. Ask the shop to write the stone type and where it came from on the receipt. Prices run from souvenir to collector level and depend on the stone, the carving and the conversation, so agree on a figure before anything is wrapped.

Ink sticks are an easier purchase and pack better. Ground on a plain stone with a few drops of water, even a small one gives off a faint smell of pine smoke. That smell is the quickest way to understand why generations of scholars wrote poems about their desks.

What the Huizhou table puts in front of you

Huizhou cooking is mountain food, salted and fermented to keep. The dish people dare each other to order is chou guiyu (臭鳜鱼, chòu guìyú): mandarin fish cured until it smells sharp, then braised until the flesh comes apart in firm flakes that locals compare to garlic cloves. It tastes much milder than it smells. Restaurants usually charge for it by the weight of the fish, so ask how it is priced before the kitchen picks one out.

Maodoufu (毛豆腐, máo dòufu), or hairy tofu, is cubes of tofu left to grow a soft white fuzz, then pan-fried until crisp and eaten with chilli sauce. Stalls near the archway fry it on flat griddles through the day. Huangshan shaobing (黄山烧饼, Huángshān shāobǐng) are small flaky discs filled with preserved greens and a little pork. They are slapped onto the walls of charcoal drum ovens and sold by the bag. In spring, look for fresh bamboo shoots and daoban xiang (刀板香, dāobǎn xiāng), cured pork steamed on the same wooden board it was sliced on.

Down to the river at Yuliang

Shexian sits where the Lian River (练江, Liàn Jiāng) bends below the old walls, and the best walk in town follows the water. Taiping Bridge (太平桥, Tàipíng Qiáo) crosses to the far bank on a long run of stone arches. Near the bridge stands Taibai Tower (太白楼, Tàibái Lóu), named for the Tang poet Li Bai. Few people linger there, and the view back toward the gables is clean.

Downstream, Yuliang (渔梁, Yúliáng) was the old town's port. Merchants left from here by boat down the Xin'an River (新安江, Xīn'ān Jiāng) toward Hangzhou and the coast. The village keeps one long street of stone paving and wooden shutters. At its end is the Yuliang Dam (渔梁坝, Yúliáng Bà), a broad stone weir whose blocks are locked together with stone keys so the river can pour over it without pulling it apart. In the late afternoon you may see people walking along the top where it is open, fishing from the edge or rinsing vegetables in the slack water below.

You can walk to Yuliang from the old town along the river or take a short taxi ride. Go late: the reason is the walk back at dusk, when the walls are lit above the water and the shopping street has emptied.

Getting there, staying over, and the other Huizhou

Shexian North station (歙县北站, Shèxiàn Běi Zhàn) is on the high-speed line between Hangzhou and Huangshan. Most services from Hangzhou East take under two hours, and Huangshan North is a short hop further along. From the station, a taxi or local bus takes you into the old town. Check timetables and seats on the 12306 railway app, because the number of services changes with the season.

The mistake worth avoiding is a matter of spelling. Huizhou (徽州) in Anhui and Huizhou (惠州) in Guangdong look the same in romanised form, and map and ride-hailing apps will happily send you to the wrong one. Type 徽州古城 in characters and check that the province reads 安徽 before you confirm.

Guesthouses (民宿, mínsù) in converted old houses are the reason to stay the night. Expect rooms around a sky well, steep wooden stairs, thin walls and some damp. Homes this far south of the Yangtze generally have no central heating, so in winter ask whether the room has an air-conditioner that heats or an electric blanket. The lanes go quiet early in the evening, so plan to eat before late.

April to May and October to November are mild. In March, the surrounding countryside turns yellow with rapeseed. In June the plum rains (梅雨, méiyǔ) make the flagstones slick, and the national holidays in early May and early October bring crowds. The ticketed houses and the yamen sometimes share a combined ticket, so confirm what is included and the opening hours at the ticket office or on the scenic area's official WeChat account. Above all, don't treat Shexian as a half-day stop on the way to Huangshan. One night here gets you the lanes at seven in the morning and the river at dusk, and those are the hours this town is worth seeing in.