Xiangyu Castle

Xiangyu Castle is a 17th-century fortified hamlet that has changed surprisingly little since it was built. The stone walls, watchtowers, and gated entrance still define the settlement boundary, and the original courtyard houses within the walls are largely intact, even if no longer all inhabited. The scale is smaller than either Guoyu Village or the Huangcheng compound, making it possible to take in the whole site in an hour without feeling rushed.

The surrounding landscape here is more rugged than at the Huangcheng compound — the castle sits higher in the Taihang foothills, with views across terraced fields and forested ridges. In autumn the hillsides behind the castle turn red and orange, making this one of the more photographically rewarding sites in the area. The castle is close enough to Guoyu Village to visit both in the same afternoon if you have transport.

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A story
Xiangyu Castle was built entirely in the seventeenth century by a single clan who wanted a defensible refuge during the dynastic chaos that accompanied the fall of the Ming. The walls were designed to be held by the family's own retainers against raiding forces, not to withstand a professional military siege — the architecture reflects an anxiety about social disorder rather than warfare, which says something specific about the period in which it was built.