Zhuge Bagua Village

Zhuge Bagua Village is inhabited by descendants of Zhuge Liang, the Three Kingdoms strategist, who claim an unbroken line and number several thousand in the village. It is laid out around a central pond shaped as a taiji symbol, with eight lanes radiating from it and an outer ring of eight hills, forming the eight-trigram bagua pattern attributed to their ancestor's military formations. The lanes are deliberately confusing, curving and interconnecting so that strangers lose their bearings quickly, a defensive quality that reportedly kept the village untouched during fighting in the 1930s. Some two hundred Ming and Qing buildings survive, including ancestral halls and a hall dedicated to Zhuge Liang.

What you actually see

• The bagua layout - the taiji pond with eight lanes radiating outward.
• The confusing lanes - streets designed so that outsiders lose direction.
• The ancestral halls - buildings honouring Zhuge Liang and the clan.
• The Ming and Qing houses - some two hundred surviving buildings.

When to go

March to May and September to November; the village is a working settlement and quieter than Zhejiang's famous water towns. Weekends bring domestic visitors. Summer is hot and humid.

Honest expectations

Getting lost is genuinely easy and part of the design. The village is lived in, and many buildings are private. Entry is charged. English interpretation is essentially absent, and the historical claims about the layout are traditional rather than documented.

Nearby

Lanxi lies north; Jinhua and Hengdian are east.