The beautiful mountains and rivers of ancient Huizhou was home to many wealthy merchants and powerful families, creating a flourishing culture that developed into the unique Xin'an civilization. People of Huizhou have maintained their distinctive folkways and customs to this day bound by the special geographical location and feudal ethics. Just as is recorded in the earliest Xin'an Annals, it remains somewhat isolated by high mountains, preventing people from being influenced by the customs of other places .The mountaineers' style of dress has remain unchanged for hundreds of years.

As late as the Ming and Qing Dynasties, residents lived in compact clans without any outsiders with their living style similar to that of ancient times. However, it has been the common practice of the Huizhou people to work hard but live frugally, to further their studies while doing farm work, to respect elders and to care for the young. From generation to generation they have held great importance on etiquette.

When encountering locals around the villages and towns of Huangshan area, visitors find them to be very simple folks going about their daily life. They retain customs with traces left from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, or even from the Tang and Song Dynasties. Such traditions may be ever-present in their daily life such as funerals, weddings, baby birth celebrations, or in their couplets, festivities, temple fairs, or sports and recreations. It is interesting to see that customs and dialects vary from neighborhoods. A visitor wrote, one sees different folkways every ten miles and hears different lilts every five miles.

For example, the word salt is pronounced yan in Tunxi, and ya in Wan'an about two miles away, and cuozi in Xiuning Town not more than ten miles away. The dialects contain many image words, such as a butterfly is called cloth wings, an ink slab "ink tile" and an eel is a ''snake" fish.Locals sometimes converse in an elegant style and use words that are often found in a classical drama. To cite a few examples, they say platform instead of table, grand instead of rich, outstanding instead of pretty , spouse instead of wife , raise water instead of fetch water . Some of the more eloquent expressions bear a classical literary style. They would say 'a pleasure all over' instead of simply comfortable. It becomes humorous to hear such embellishments in a casual conversation.