Dressing

Women living in tidal-flat areas liked to wrap their heads with towels when they were at work, and called the towels "Jintoubu". Meanwhile, the women living in mountain areas liked to wrap their heads with cloth, and called it "Baotoubu". 

Women living in tidal-flat areas and some in civil land areas were accustomed to wearing aprons. In civil land areas, the aprons would be decorated with little silver dollars as the buttons or embroidered flowers. In tidal-flat areas, the aprons were more simple and unadorned.

After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, men in Xiangshan soon cut off their long braids and wore closely cropped hair or even shaved their head. Those living in the city gradually turned to wearing suits, which was colloquially known as "Huaqizhuang". Girls began to keep long hair usually at the age of 4 or 5. When their hairs grew longer, the unmarried woman made a ponytail with red strings, while the married ones wore hair in a bun or just kept loose braid. 

After the 1930s, wave hair style was getting popular among rich families. But in average families, women would like to use flat spicules or irony hairpins. After the founding of China, young women in Zhongshan gradually liked to wear two pigtails. Since the 1980s, more and more people liked wave hair style and diversified hairstyles.

Housing styles 

In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, most residential buildings in Shiqi and civil land areas were half timber bungalows. The houses of less richer families contained only one hall and one room, while those of richer families were at least two houses (built between two gable walls) of more than two jins (a jin is the distance between the front yard door and the back yard door) in depth. 

There were over 17 rooms in a large house while no more than 15 in a smaller one. A few houses were designed in western-style, with two or three stories high. Wealthy families used black bricks to build walls and laid out a vacant lot in front of the house gate as the courtyard. There was also a dooryard between the first and the second halls. 

In Shiqi, Xiaolan, Shaxi and other places, a small number of wealthy families designed their houses in the style of quadrangle dwellings in northern China. The courtyard was in the middle and circled by rooms. The central room, which was called the "inner hall", faced the south, with wing-rooms set on both sides and the hall in the opposite. 

In modern times, many overseas Chinese went back to their hometowns to build houses, which adopted western-style building structures. The old-style houses were gradually replaced by the new, beautiful and practical buildings that combined Chinese and western styles. 

After the founding of China, many double-storey Chinese-western buildings of this kind were built in Shiqi and civil land areas. Since the 1980s, buildings with more than 4 stories were widely seen in Shiqi.

Residents in tidal-flat areas mostly lived in settlements on both sides of the rivers. Their simple houses mostly comprised grass hut, with mud walls and bamboo huts, while half timber bungalows were rare. 

But things had changed since the 1970s, when the huts gradually disappeared and were replaced by two- or three-storey buildings or bungalows featured concrete or half timber. The half timber bungalows comprised a hall and a room. Beside the room was a walkway leading to the back door and between the hall and the room were the lattice windows. 

The wooden structure or mezzanine would be constructed inside some bungalows while the kitchen and toilet were built outside. In front of the bungalow, there would be a vacant lot. Food was usually stored outside the front door for the purpose of reducing losses caused by a fire.