Sense of history gives Xitang modern appeal

The hanfu cultural week in Xitang sees many visitors don the traditional dress last year. A scene in Mission Impossible III involving Tom Cruise running through the small alleys of a picturesque town in China left a deep impression on some of those who watched and propelled Xitang, an ancient town in Jiashan county, Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, where the scene was filmed in 2005, to a leading role in tourism. Walking along Xitang's canals, visitors may feel like they are in a Chinese ink painting with blue-stone roads, quaint alleys and houses built in the distinctive style of Huizhou, a historical prefecture that straddled the border between southern Anhui province and the north of Jiangxi province, where homes have white walls, dark tiles and layered horse-head gables. Over the ages, Xitang's development has been closely related to culture, which has endowed the ancient town with new grandeur, says Han Jinmei, a cultural scholar from Jiashan county, who is also former deputy director of Jiashan's cultural bureau. In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, some Huizhou merchants brought their aesthetic values and business styles with them, giving rise to a genteel culture in Xitang, Han says.