Huangshi is in Hubei, in Central China.
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Hubei · City Guide
Huangshi, Three Thousand Years of Digging the Same Hills.
Overview
Why Go
Tonglüshan was worked for copper from the Shang through the Han. Excavation from 1973 exposed vertical shafts, galleries and the timber frames that held them up, preserved in place under cover.
The Daye iron mine next door was worked open-cast until the benches dropped more than four hundred metres below the original hill. It is now a mine park, with a planted forest growing on the waste rock.
The Xisai divine boat festival was inscribed by UNESCO in 2009 as part of the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival. It runs for forty days around the fifth lunar month and ends with a paper boat sent down the Yangtze.
Xisai Mountain is the cliff in a Tang lyric about egrets and a fisherman in the rain that Chinese children still learn by heart. The cliff, the river bend and the egrets are all still there.
Between the workings the prefecture is unexpectedly wet: Cihu inside the city, Xiandao Lake with a hundred islands in the hills, and the Wanghu wetland where swans and geese winter.
See
Excavated shafts and galleries with their original timber framing, plus smelting furnaces and a museum of tools and ore. It is a working understanding of Bronze Age mining, not a reconstruction. Two hours.
A viewing platform on the rim of the Daye open pit, with the benches and haul roads dropping away below, and a planted forest on the old waste dumps beside it. Two hours.
A rock headland where the Yangtze narrows, with a pavilion on top, old fortification remains and barges going past below. The poem is carved at the foot. Ninety minutes.
A reservoir in the Yangxin hills broken up by a great many small wooded islands, with boat routes between them and quiet shore villages. Half a day, and the boat is the point.
An old street in Yangxin where the trades are still in the shops: barbers, a tofu workshop, teahouses and a blacksmith. It functions rather than performs. Ninety minutes.
A shallow lake and reed system in Yangxin that fills with wintering swans, geese and ducks between November and February. Little infrastructure. Half a day, and bring binoculars.
On the Map
Approximate locations of the attractions above, across Huangshi.
Eat
A herbal liquor distilled at Daye and sold nationwide in small bottles, infused with medicinal roots. It is sweeter and lower in strength than baijiu and is drunk at ordinary dinners rather than banquets.
Freshwater fish pounded to a paste with egg white and starch, steamed into a pale cake and sliced into soup or stir-fries. Bouncy rather than flaky, and a fixture of banquet tables in this part of Hubei.
Sweet potato starch spread into sheets, folded and dried on racks, then soaked back and stir-fried or boiled. They stay slippery and hold sauce, which is why the county has made them for generations.
Freshwater crab from the lakes, steamed plain with ginger vinegar, in season from late September to November. The lakeside restaurants price by weight and by how full the roe is.
Do
The square timber frames in the shafts are the thing to look at: joined without nails, holding open a hole cut three thousand years ago. Everything else at the site follows from that one detail.
Find the haul road and follow it down with the eyes to get the depth. Then turn round and look at the forest planted on the waste rock behind visitors; both halves are the same story.
The ritual runs over about forty days around the fifth lunar month, ending when the paper boat is floated onto the Yangtze. The building and the processions are as much of it as the finish.
There are enough islands that the lake reads as a maze from water level. Boats run from the main pier and the far shore villages are the quieter place to stay.
When
Mild and green with the river up. The ideal conditions for the mine sites and the lakes, and the strongest window.
Hot, humid and the Yangtze flood season, with the divine boat ritual running around the fifth lunar month. Start early.
Crab season, clear air and comfortable walking. The other good window and the ideal light over the pit.
Cool and grey rather than cold, with wintering swans on Wanghu. The mine sites are open and almost empty.
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Huangshi is in Hubei, in Central China.
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