Furong Town, the Hunan waterfall town that took its name from a film

At the lower end of the stone street a woman lifts pale cubes out of a basin of water, tips them into a bowl, adds chilli, chopped sour radish and a spoon of broth, and passes it across the counter before you have finished pointing. The sign above her names a film. So does the sign next door. In Furong Town (芙蓉镇, Furong Zhen), in the hills of western Hunan, the film is older than most of the people in the queue, and the town it was shot in now answers to its title.

A river port that took a film's name

For most of its life this was Wangcun (王村), a landing on the Youshui (酉水, You River) in Yongshun County (永顺县), in the Tujia and Miao country of Xiangxi (湘西). In the mid-1980s the director Xie Jin brought a crew here to shoot Hibiscus Town, from Gu Hua's novel about a rice-tofu seller whose small prosperity is taken from her and slowly returned over two hard decades. The novel's town is invented, and the book sets it far to the south, near where Hunan meets Guangdong and Guangxi. The crew found the look they wanted on a wet stone street above a different river.

Visitors began asking for the film's town rather than the real one, and the name was eventually made official. The railway station, the road signs and the ticket gate say Furong now. Wangcun survives in local speech and in the name some maps still give the waterfall, so it helps to recognise both.

What the camera used and what it left behind

The main location was the flagstone street, the Wuli Shiban Jie (五里石板街, five-li stone street), which climbs from the river wharf through the town in long shallow steps. The slabs are bluestone, worn hollow down the middle and slick in rain, which is frequent. Timber shopfronts on either side close with planks slotted into a sill; early in the morning you can watch them being lifted out one at a time and stacked against the wall.

Partway up, a carved stone archway (牌坊, paifang) straddles the street. It looks like the oldest thing in sight, and it is locally described as a prop, put up for the shoot and never taken down. The film's best-known sequence, two people sweeping these stones at dawn with bamboo brooms, was staged on this street. Stills hang in several shops, but no plaque fixes the spot, and the street reads better without one.

Rice tofu, ordered by pointing

The dish at the centre of the story is mi doufu (米豆腐), and it contains no soy. Rice is soaked, ground to a slurry, cooked with a little alkaline water until it sets, then cut into thumbnail cubes and kept under water until someone orders. The cubes are faintly yellow and soft enough to break on a spoon, with a mineral edge the toppings are there to answer: chilli oil, suan luobo (酸萝卜, sour pickled radish), scallion and a ladle of thin broth.

Several stalls on the lower street present themselves as the one from the film. A visitor cannot settle that, and has little reason to. Choose the counter where the basin is refilled most often, find the price board on the wall before ordering, and say if you want it mild, because the default assumes otherwise. Further up, sides of larou (腊肉, smoked pork) hang over doorways, and a few shops sell xilankapu (西兰卡普), the dense geometric brocade woven by the Tujia.

The waterfall under the houses

The water here does not only pass the town; it goes through it. A stream drops off the cliff in the middle of the settlement in two broad steps and lands in the Youshui, with diaojiaolou (吊脚楼), the stilted timber houses of the Tujia, built out over the edge on both sides. The town's slogan, repeated on its signage, calls it the thousand-year town hung on a waterfall.

挂在瀑布上的千年古镇。

A stepped path descends the cliff and passes behind the falling water, where the overhang is low, the floor is wet and conversation stops. Beside the falls stands the Tuwang Xinggong (土王行宫), presented as a retreat of the Tusi (土司), the hereditary chieftains who governed this region for centuries. The viewing terraces and balconied hotels across the gorge are recent, and after dark the cliff is floodlit in changing colours. Volume follows the season: heavy after summer rain, noticeably thinner in the dry winter months.

The older story at the wharf

The film gave the town its name, not its age. In the folk museum inside the scenic area stands the Xizhou Tongzhu (溪州铜柱), an eight-sided bronze column, taller than a person, cast in the tenth century and inscribed with the terms of a peace between the Chu kingdom and the local chieftains. Exhibition halls do not always keep the same schedule as the street, so ask at the ticket office before counting on it.

The wharf at the foot of the stone street explains the rest. The Youshui feeds the Yuan River (沅江), and Wangcun was where cargo from the hills went onto boats; a long stepped street lined with shops is what a carrying trade leaves behind. Travellers with another day can continue to Laosicheng (老司城), the ruined Tusi seat elsewhere in Yongshun County, which is on the World Heritage list.

Getting there and when to walk the street

Furongzhen Station (芙蓉镇站) is on the Zhangjiajie–Jishou–Huaihua high-speed line (张吉怀高铁), between Zhangjiajie West (张家界西) and Fenghuang Gucheng (凤凰古城). It sits outside the old town, and shuttle buses and taxis usually meet arrivals; check times on 12306 or at the station, since services can thin in the evening. The old town is a ticketed scenic area. Confirm the current admission, and whether a ticket covers re-entry after dark, at the ticket office or on the scenic area's official WeChat account, and carry your passport for the staffed window.

Stay one night if the itinerary allows. Tour groups fill the lower street from late morning to late afternoon; by breakfast the next day it belongs to the plank-lifters and the first basins of rice tofu, which is as near to the film's dawn as the town now gets. Bring shoes with grip for wet flagstones. The common mistake is to treat Furong as a two-hour stop between Zhangjiajie and Fenghuang, which buys a waterfall photograph and a bowl eaten standing, and misses the street at the hour the film made its own.