Wuyi Palace and Song Street

Wuyi Palace and Song Street lie near the entrance to the Mount Wuyi scenic area in Wuyishan City, Nanping, in northern Fujian. Mount Wuyi was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1999 for both natural and cultural value, including the site of Neo-Confucian scholarship and Daoist and Buddhist temples. Wuyi Palace, originally known as the Wanniangong, has a history reaching to the Tang dynasty and was supported by emperors in the Song, when it housed a Daoist priest as a state-sponsored official post. The current halls are reconstructions in Song style, built in the 1980s and later on the original site, and include the main hall, an ancestral hall and gardens with a pond. Nearby stands a bronze-cast tablet and a banyan tree said to be centuries old. Song Street is a themed recreation of a Song dynasty market street, with timber shopfronts, performers, and craft stalls selling tea and local goods, and it is meant to evoke the commerce and tea culture that grew around Mount Wuyi, famed for Wuyi rock tea such as Da Hong Pao. The site's curation is open-air and themed rather than archaeological, so visitors should note that much of the architecture is modern. Preservation efforts focus on the surrounding landscape and the historic Zhu Xi academy sites located elsewhere in the reserve. A visit commonly takes one to two hours and fits with a bamboo raft ride on the Nine-Bend River and tea tastings. Signage is largely in Chinese.