As rapeseed flowers bloom in spring, a fertile swath of central China has transformed into a sea of yellow. When rainstorms descend in the summer, the fields pulsate emerald green and canals brim with brown water.

Descendants of the original merchant owners still living in a home built in 1664 in Xidi, China.

In the Huizhou region, Anhui province, the weathered white-walled homes endure through all seasons, rising like pottery shards from the earth, each as a testimony to the prosperity of earlier generations.

Yet nowadays, Anhui is known more for migrant workers who flee their homeland for booming cities.

However theses villages had some of the most aggressive merchants of the Chinese imperial era.

They saw with clear eyes what ordinary people craved — salt, tea and lumber.

Huizhou, in the southernmost part of Anhui, became synonymous with entrepreneurialism.

Although no longer the case, the legacy of the merchants can be seen in their lavish two-story family villas from that age, which is drawing attention from scholars, tourists and filmmakers.

"The houses are why people come here," said Cao Lili, 24, a local resident who led visitors on a rainy afternoon through the narrow alleyways of Guanlu. "Where else in China can you see this kind of history?"

The preserved villas with 400 residents are typical throughout Huizhou. They hold interior courtyards with wooden pillars and latticed screens that shield window openings.

Windows face the inner yard rather than open into village lanes, since merchants, were often away from home and did not want people to catch a glimpse of their wealth — or of their wives, concubines and daughters.

The children lived on the second floor; the wives and concubines lived in separate quarters on the first floor.

"Many men miss the feudal society days," Ms. Cao said with a smile.

The most impressive villas were built by eight sons of a businessman surnamed Wang who during the late Qing Dynasty that ended in 1911, made his fortune selling candle wax.

Ms. Cao said the villas occupy 65,000 square feet of space, accounting for about two-thirds of the village. The homes are split as multiple households, including some that descended from the Wang family.

In Xidi, a village famous for being shaped like a boat, about 1,000 residents belong to 300 households at the foot of lush hills.

Outsiders visit on weekends to wander alleyways and look at two-story ancestral temples funded by the merchants. A couple from Shanghai has converted one home into a popular rustic guesthouse, the Pig's Inn.

From 13th to the 20th centuries, Huizhou was known for its mountains and merchants, according to research by Nancy Zeng a Berliner and curator of Chinese art at the Essex Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass.

She reached an agreement with villagers in Huizhou in 1997 to transport a traditional villa, Yin Yu Tang, to her museum.

In her book on the villa, Ms. Berliner wrote that the rugged land of Huizhou made rice farming a challenge, forcing men to become merchants to trade goods for rice.

The rivers enabled trade, particularly on the Xin'an River, which runs from Huizhou east to Hangzhou, a bustling city in Zhejiang province.

"Huizhou became inexorably linked with the word merchant," Ms. Berliner wrote. Shopping streets in the far-flung corners of the nation were called Huizhou Merchant Street.

"A unique regional culture and lifestyle evolved in this largely merchant society," she added, one where merchants sought to "imitate the more respected lifestyles of scholars, literati and urbanites; and where the growing wealth of the merchants was funneled into building grand homes for their wives, children and descendants, and magnificent clan halls for their ancestors."

As in many parts of rural China, a single clan would dominate most villages and each clan was associated with a particular business. One family, with the surname Hu, earned renown as salt merchants who spread to coastal provinces such as Zhejiang and Shanghai.

Wealth did not flow to all residents. Some branches of the Huang clan did farm work and many descendants still work in low-paying jobs.

"People who have money, have money," said Huang Jianjun, 38, a driver from a local farming household. "People who don't have money don't have money."

Many villagers left for Taiwan and Hong Kong in 1949, when the Communists seized control of the mainland. Some homes were torn down in the 1960s and '70s, or destroyed by Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution.

Local people are preserving homes to attract tourists. Dozens of postcard-ready villages have been scattered around the countryside. Tourism companies such as Xidi and Hongcun, charge admissions.

Zhang Yimou, a film director, shot "Ju Dou," a 1990 movie about an illicit passion in the village of Nanping, which is dominated by the Ye clan and holds eight notable ancestral halls.

Taiwanese-American director Ang Lee followed later to shoot a fight scene for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

A popular Hong Kong star, Chow Yun-fat, returned to the area three times since the production, said Wu Qiuyue, 24, a Hongcun resident who works as a Nanping guide.

Since Mr. Zhang put Nanping on the map, 30 to 40 films or shows have been shot in the village, she said. "They knew how to build homes back then," she said, "in a way that you don't see today."