Daokou Ancient Town

Daokou Ancient Town

Daokou Ancient Town is a national AAAA-level tourist attraction.

Daokou Town is located on the banks of the Wei River in the northwest of Huaxian County, Henan Province, covering an area of 17.9 square kilometers. It administers 10 administrative villages and 5 communities, with a total population of over 86,000 residents, and is the seat of the Huaxian County Committee and County Government. In 2014, Daokou Town was named a Famous Historical and Cultural Town of China by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the National Cultural Heritage Administration. The protected area of the ancient town spans 136.56 hectares, including a core conservation area of 19.7 hectares.

The World Heritage Site of the Grand Canal of China meanders through Daokou Ancient Town. The protected zone preserves a wealth of original historical relics such as ancient river channels, docks, city walls, temples, residences, and merchant shops, with over 2,000 historic buildings witnessing the millennia-long prosperity of the Grand Canal. In addition to these numerous historic sites, Daokou Ancient Town is also famed for its age-old flavor that has wafted far and wide for over 300 years: Daokou Roast Chicken, hailed as a “Famous Delicacy of Central China.”

Around the time of the successful application for the Grand Canal’s World Heritage status, Daokou Town raised over 60 million yuan from various sources to carry out concentrated efforts in restoring cultural heritage sites such as the river channel, city walls, and docks, as well as environmental improvements and river dredging. Regarding the protective restoration of historic buildings, more than 20 million yuan was invested, adopting a “public-assisted, privately-built” unified four-in-one construction model—namely unified planning and design, unified construction timelines, unified subsidy standards, and unified supervision—mobilizing over 40 million yuan in social funding. This led to the restoration of over 3,000 square meters of historic architecture. Additionally, over 10 million yuan was invested in projects such as relocating underground pipelines and repaving streets in the ancient district, transforming the canal-side ancient town from a shantytown into a World Heritage site and tourist destination.

In recent years, a series of venues have been established, including the Ancient Town Folk Museum, Tongheyu Bank Exhibition Hall, Grand Canal Historical and Cultural Exhibition Hall, and the Grand Canal Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition Hall—all open to the public free of charge. The project involving the protective restoration of the Dawang Temple and Old Granary, along with the monitoring center, which cost over 9 million yuan, was also put into use in 2017, playing a positive role in better preserving and promoting the cultural heritage of the canal-side ancient town.