Dongchudao Seaweed-House Village

Cultural heritage

Dongchudao village lies in Ningjin Subdistrict of Rongcheng, Weihai, founded in the Ming Wanli era as a typical Jiaodong fishing village and one of the most complete surviving clusters of seaweed houses in the region, with over four hundred years of history. The village keeps more than two hundred seaweed houses—stone-walled, seaweed-roofed, the roofs heaped to soft ridges, thick and rustic, praised as a "living specimen of ecological dwelling." In 2007 it was named a third-batch China Historic and Cultural Village, and has since won titles including China Traditional Village and China Beautiful Leisure Village.

Visiting: Wandering Dongchudao village, clusters of seaweed houses step along the shore, their grey-brown roofs and stone walls glowing rustic in the sun like a living museum of the form; the village also keeps folk arts such as paper-cutting, dough figurines and fisher drums, and visitors can step into a home to hear elders tell of thatching craft and days at sea—the truest place to feel Jiaodong's maritime dwellings and fisherfolk life.