Profound cultural heritage
Huangshan city is the hometown of Huizhou merchants and is the birthplace of Huizhou culture.
Huizhou merchants owned almost half of China's wealth between the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
Huangshan is home to two world natural and cultural heritage sites, 49 national historical and cultural protection sites, 24 national intangible cultural heritage and 26 national historical and cultural cities, streets, towns and villages.
The influence of Xin'an neo-confucianism, Xin'an medicine, the Xin'an painting school, Huizhou-style architecture, the four Huizhou-style craft of carvings – brick carving, stone carving, wood carving, bamboo carving – and Huizhou-style potted landscape continues to resound around the world.
In addition, Hui Opera is the originator of the Peking Opera and Anhui cuisine is one of the eight major regional cuisines in China.
A carpenter gilds an ancient Huizhou-style building. [PHOTO BY SHI YALEI/FOR CHINA DAILY]
Rich natural resources
There are more than 3,000 kinds of plants and 490 kinds of animals in Huangshan.
The giant tea plantation in Huangshan covers an area of 800,000 mu (53,333 hectares), with a total output of 43,000 metric tons of tea annually. Among the top 10 traditional Chinese tea, Taiping Monkey Tea, Huangshan Maofeng and Qimen Black Tea are produced in Huangshan city.
The annual average surface runoff of the spring water is more than 10 billion cubic meters. There are nine proven sources of mineral water, with the water volume reaching 2,897.5 cubic meters of water a day and allowable mining volume reaching 2,391 cu m per day.
Some 46 kinds of minerals have been identified in the city, among which 140,000 tons of tungsten ore has been discovered and identified, as well as in situ resources of 10,800 tons of molybdenum ore, the biggest deposit of the resource in China.
The development area for the city's forestry fruit and vegetable industry is 1.6 million mu. There is 158,900 mu currently given over to 31 kinds of Chinese medicinal materials planting and 90,000 mu under cultivation for chrysanthemums. The annual output of spring fish is about 2,400 tons.