The Bewitching Array

Bewitching Array

The Bewitching Array is a cultural tourism attraction.

The "Bewitching Array" villages are located 6 kilometers northeast of Yanggu County. They consist of a pair of peculiar small villages. The southern one is called the Big Bewitching Array, and the northern one is called the Small Bewitching Array. Ironically, the Big Bewitching Array village is smaller, while the Small Bewitching Array village is larger. The Small Bewitching Array has maintained a unique architectural layout—the village is not spread out on a flat plane, but rather takes the shape of a crescent moon. Two main streets run in a curved line from the northeast to the southwest, slanting and winding without a fixed direction. Their slopes vary, as do their orientations. On one street, both sides are called the main room (north-facing rooms), yet they are actually offset by 90 degrees. The alleys are chaotic, with no straight lanes. Most street intersections form T-junctions, and parallel streets are uneven in length. The houses are built along the orientation of the streets. Because the changes are subtle, people often mistake the variously oriented houses for all facing north, creating a sense of disorientation. Moreover, the roads and field ridges outside the village are also laid out diagonally. As a result, the streets, houses, roads, and plots of land are all slanted. Visitors entering the village experience spatial (directional) and even temporal disorientation. As the streets curve and houses interweave, it feels as if directions are constantly shifting—where there is north and south, there is also east and west, and vice versa. If you use the sun to tell time, it might be before 10 a.m. on the front street but feel like high noon, while on the back street, what looks like noon is actually 4 p.m. A local rhyme describes the situation: “Enter the Bewitching Array, and even a top scholar can’t find their way; east, west, south, north, and center—all are just alleys; it’s like pushing a millstone, going round and round till dark.”

For hundreds of years and across dozens of generations, every household has built their homes according to the directional rules passed down from their ancestors, and no one in the village has ever made any new regulations regarding this.