Laopeng Ancient Village, located in Guangfuqiao Town of Cili County, Zhangjaijie City, is famous for its beautiful natural scenery and traditional Chinese paper-making, which attracts tourist to visit from home and abroad.
Where is Laopeng Village
Laopeng Village is situated in Laopenggou which is a picturesque remote mountainous area at the junction of Taoyuan, Cili, and Shimen counties in Hunan Province.
History & Legand
The vast majority of villagers in Laopeng Village have the surname Xie, and there is also a portion with the surname Cai. According to the genealogy of the Cai family, in the late Eastern Han Dynasty（25-220）, the descendants of Cai Lun ( 21-122 ), the inventor of papermaking, one of the the Four Great Inventions in ancient China, migrated from Leiyang County of Hunan Province, to escape the war.
Meanwhile, five Xie brothers also migrated here. At first, they came here without any home to live, so they cut down some trees and built grass huts one after another. Nobody expected them to live here for many years. So, later people called this place Laopeng Valley or Laopeng Village.
Laopenggou is located at the southeast foot of the Taoist holy land ——Wulei Mountain. There are many Taoist temples nearby the village, such as Xingde Palace on Xingde Mountain, Sanyuan Palace in the neighboring Sanwang Village.
People come here for pilgrimage in an endless stream. For the sake of livelihood, the ancestors planted bamboo here. Look, the bamboo trees growing all over the mountains on the slopes which this old shed ditch are planted and propagated by the ancestors here.
The Cai family not only made a living by making paper, but also taught this paper-making technique to the five brothers of the Xie family.
What to see in Laopeng Village
Traditional Laopeng Paper-making
Phyllostachys pubescens, a kind of bamboo, is the raw material used to make the paper, and this traditional technique involves 10-step procedures.An ancient papermaking technique is still popular in Laopeng village in Zhangjiajie, central China’s Hunan province. With technological advancements, making paper by hand has given way to machinery production and the ancient papermaking in Laopeng village is slowly fading out of sight.
Russian Tourists viist Laopeng Village to learn Xie Guangyao displaying handmade papers on May 21, 2019