The concentration of pre-1949 foreign-built villas on Jigongshan is one of the most distinctive things about the mountain. Between 1898 and 1936, missionaries representing dozens of Western organisations constructed more than three hundred summer residences here, escaping the punishing heat of central China's lowland cities. The result is an inadvertent outdoor museum: English cottages with low eaves and brick chimneys sitting next to American colonial porches, Swiss chalets with ornamental carved woodwork, and the occasional attempt at a Chinese-influenced synthesis. Some villas are now guesthouses, others are in various states of conversion, and a handful stand empty and slowly returning to the forest.
Walking the paths between the villas, you encounter buildings that could have been lifted from the Cotswolds or the New England coast and then set down, incongruously, in subtropical Chinese forest. The combination of historical strangeness and genuine beauty — the old buildings draped in wisteria, moss on the stone walls, pine and bamboo framing the views — makes for a walk unlike anything else in Henan. The Wuzhiling area has the greatest density of well-preserved buildings and the best-maintained paths.