Túnxī

The Túnxī culture is the heart of old Huizhou, the mountain pocket of southern Anhui around Tunxi, Xiuning and Yixian, reaching Wuyuan across the Jiangxi border. The Song renamed She Prefecture Huizhou in 1211, and its six counties kept their bounds for roughly eight hundred years.

Isolated by the terrain, each township developed its own form of Huizhou speech, variously assigned to Wu, Gan or a branch of Chinese of its own. The Tunxi variety represents its Xiu-Yi subgroup.

Poor farmland pushed the natives into trade. From the Ming onward Huizhou merchants dealt in salt, tea, ink and books across the Yangtze valley, while publishing houses and Hui opera troupes flourished at home; in the eighteenth century those troupes traveled to the capital and helped shape Peking opera. The merchants' wealth left the white-walled, horse-head-gabled mansions and memorial archways of Yixian.