Xikou preserves an unusually complete set of sites associated with Chiang Kai-shek, whose family had lived in this valley for generations. The Yutai Salt Shop on the main street is the building where he was born in 1887. Nearby, the Fenggao House was the main family residence, and Wenchang Pavilion — a two-storey library pavilion by the river — was built for him and his wife Song Meiling during their visits. The ancestral hall of the Chiang family stands at the end of the main street.
The sites are officially managed and well-maintained, with bilingual signage. The Chinese perspective on Chiang is nuanced and has shifted since the 1980s: once simply the enemy, he is now recognised as a complex figure who led resistance to Japan and who, in the view of some mainland Chinese, was a Chinese nationalist leader who happened to lose the civil war. Walking through these well-kept rooms gives a sense of how the past is being actively renegotiated.