Tunxi Old Street （屯溪老街）

Tunxi Old Street [File photo]

Location: Huangshan, Anhui Province

Landscape index: 80 percent

Time to visit: Anytime

With a history dating back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279), Tunxi Old Street is one of China's best-preserved commercial streets and features the architectural style of the Southern Song, Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties (1644-1911).

Located in the center of Tunxi District, Huangshan City in Anhui Province, the street, paved with maroon flagstones, has a total length of 1,273 meters, 895 meters of which represent a pedestrian commercial street. Two and three storey shops line both sides of the streets and feature the local Anhui style of architecture including a stone base, brick construction and tile roof. The buildings typically house shops at the front, with houses and workshops being located at the rear. The street developed into a distribution center for materials in and out of Anhui during the Qing Dynasty.

Visitors today can still find many famous shops on Tunxi Old Street, such as Tongderen, a Traditional Chinese Medicine shop with a history of more than 120 years. The area is a distribution point for the world-famous Qimen black tea and Tunxi green tea, and there are many teahouses, wine shops, bookshops and ink shops along the street.

The street has been dubbed a "Riverside Scene during Qingming Festival," a famous painting which describes the economic activities in ancient China. It attracts six million foreign and domestic visitors every year, and is also a popular site for shooting films and TV series.