Xizhou is a Bai town on the western shore of Erhai Lake, about twenty kilometres north of Dali, and it is the best place in the region to see how a prosperous Bai family actually lived. The town grew rich on trade in tea, salt, cloth and horses, and the merchant families built courtyard houses on a scale that the surrounding farming villages could not match. A number of them survive, and the largest - the Yan family compound - is open to visitors.
The Yan family compound
The compound is a grouped series of courtyards, each enclosed by two-storey buildings arranged around a paved court with trees, water and planted pots, and connected by covered walkways and gateways. The architecture is Bai rather than Chinese imperial: whitewashed walls with painted borders and panels, intricate timber screens and lattice windows, stone plinths, and roofs with upturned corners carrying rows of small tiles. The interior decoration combines painting, calligraphy and appliqué work, and the compound includes halls for ancestral rites, reception and family life as well as storerooms and servants' quarters. Parts of it are set up as a museum of Bai household life and, somewhat inevitably, as a venue for tea and dance performances for groups.
The town around it
Xizhou itself is a compact settlement of lanes around a central market square, with a gate, several temples and an unusually large number of surviving courtyard houses, many of them still lived in. The market runs daily with an enlarged periodic day, and the streets sell the local specialities: Xizhou baba, a flatbread cooked on a griddle with sweet or savoury filling, fresh cheese fried or grilled, and tie-dyed cloth from the nearby village of Zhoucheng. It is a working town rather than a restored stage set, and the mix of ordinary life and very fine old buildings is what makes it worth the trip.
Practical notes
Xizhou is about half an hour from Dali ancient town by car, bus or bicycle, and the ride through the farmland lanes is pleasant in good weather. The Yan compound charges an admission; the town itself is free. Come in the morning for the market and for the best light on the whitewashed walls, and allow two to three hours for the compound and the streets. The town is at about two thousand metres, so take the sun seriously, and note that many of the houses are private homes - look through open doors rather than walking in.
