Qiaotou Xiashi Village

Qiaotou Xiashi Village

Recently, cultural heritage workers discovered a well-preserved ancient village with Ming and Qing dynasty-era architecture shaped like a crab — Qiaotou Xiashi Village — in Yangxi Town, Anfu County at the foot of the Wugong Mountains. In ancient China, it was long customary to select village sites based on feng shui, terrain, and the principles of Yin-Yang and the Eight Trigrams. However, ancient villages designed in the shape of animals are still rare in China. Cultural heritage experts believe that the discovery of this crab-shaped village provides valuable physical evidence for the study of ancient Chinese village culture.

Nestled against the mountain and facing the river, the entire village sits facing south with its back to the north, lower in the front and higher in the back. All the buildings in the village are concentrated within an oval-shaped, elongated area, enclosed by boundaries paved with blue bricks and cobblestones. The site houses over 100 ancient structures including ancestral halls and residential courtyards, most of which date back to the Ming and Qing dynasties. This enclosed, block-like architectural layout resembles the shell of a crab. Surprisingly, all the doors of the ancient buildings open slightly to the left and rarely to the right, symbolizing the crab “moving sideways to the left.”

The village has two longitudinal alleys and eight transverse alleys, accompanied by two longitudinal ditches and eight transverse ditches, forming a drainage system. After exiting the village, the ditches curve and wind around the perimeter, resembling crab legs extending from the shell. Coupled with the fact that the entire village is situated on a gentle slope, it perfectly matches an old folk rhyme: “A crab has eight legs, crawling down the slope, curving and winding as it goes.”

Beside an ancient protective road to the north of the village, there are also two round ancient wells, named “Left Eye Well” and “Right Eye Well,” resembling the crab’s two eyes. The spring water in the wells never runs dry and is sweet and refreshing. Meanwhile, at the northeast and northwest corners of the village, there are two ancient embankments, each curving out toward a pond about 300 meters in front of the village and intersecting in the middle of the pond, resembling the crab’s large pincer arms.

Research indicates that when the village was first established during the Yuan dynasty, Qiaotou Xiashi did not have a crab-shaped layout. Elders in the village say that in the early Ming dynasty, due to feng shui considerations, major construction began to reshape the village into the form of a giant crab. Since then, the villagers have regarded the crab as an auspicious symbol, adopting mottos such as “daring to be the first to set the trend” and “a crab has no path, but moves forward one sidestep at a time,” encouraging the community to strive forward and dare to explore the world. (By Tong He and Guo Yuanming)