This is the first of a series on a very special mini-trip within our 17-day self-guided tour of Eastern China. For a magical 4 nights we settled into Eastern China’s ancient waterfront towns, living in Ming- and Qing-Dynasty scholar’s mansions, meeting the 20+ generation descendents of the original patriarchs, and tasted the centuries-old recipes of local yellow wine.
This beautiful cultural landscape is as essential to the Chinese as Tuscan hill towns are to the Italians in my opinion, and I wanted to give it proper justice with a deliberately slow trip. While the majority of tourists rush through just ONE of these towns in a short 2 hours, we visited FIVE towns over the course of four leisurely days. If you’re looking to compare Wuzhen vs. Xitang vs. Tongli vs. lesser known towns for your upcoming trip, hopefully this series of articles will give you a visual overview.
Now where do I begin?
The story started in the mid 1990’s when my father took an overseas assignment to work in Shanghai. That was when I first heard about these famously beautiful, but difficult-to-reach enclaves in the historic region of Jiangnan, or South of the Yangtze River. Back then these towns were but chains of ancient human settlements inter-connected by canals within a giant marshland, not unlike Tokyo in the early 1600’s, before the government gathered enough willpower to undertake a massive transformation of swamps into dryland.
That was only a generation ago when my father talked about visiting these towns in an era without paved roads, let alone high-speed rails, crossing these marshes. The only means of reliable transportation then, much like the previous 1000 years, was by the indigenous flat-bottom boats. Some were fitted with motors to serve the same function as modern buses, while others were hand-oared for short river crossings.
You can imagine each town as an island within a chain of archipelago, stretching along the general direction of the Grand Canal connecting nearby Hangzhou all the way to Beijing, 1,300 km away in the north. For more than a millennium towns like Wuzhen served as local trading hubs along this lucrative mercantile route, shipping the silk brocades and mellow glutinous rice wine of the cultured south to the great Imperial capital. Even in modern times the Grand Canal remains the most economical means for mass transportation of goods, say refined coal from faraway Shandong into Hangzhou.
Fast forward 20 years when my wife and I planned our own trip into this ancient land, aided by the ease of reliable roads and high-speed rail. The once boundless marshland is well on its way to be completely and ruthlessly gobbled up by the rapid industrialization of the Yangtze Delta, draining fishponds for residential projects and creating grids of modern roads through formerly untouched countryside. Our ancient towns remain islands in their own way, no longer separated by marshes, but by the encroaching modernization of ugly modern townships and real estate developments.
So we studied the map to pick our preferred towns to visit. While we’re aware of the so-called Six Ancient Towns of Jiangnan Region often promoted on domestic Chinese brochures, we’ve seen enough examples of how remarkable destinations can get screwed over by planned, mass tourism (see our trip to Wutaishan for instance). At the end we decided to link together several of the best-preserved (but also most-developed) towns, along with opportunities to visit a couple of undeveloped towns in their authentic pre-tourism state.
The trip-planning turned out to be NOT so easy. While visiting just one town would have been straight forward, linking together four or five became quite a challenge as direct, tourist-friendly transportation between towns do not currently exist. There is no direct bus from Wuzhen to Xitang, or from Xitang to Zhouzhuang or Tongli for instance. While there is a nameless bus connecting from Tongli in the direction of Zhouzhuang, the bus wouldn’t even list Zhouzhuang as a destination since the towns see each other as direct competitors for tourism cash.
Starting out from Hangzhou and ending at Suzhou, our itinerary for the 4-night mini-trip was:
- Hangzhou Train Station to Wuzhen (high-speed train to Tongxiang, then local bus K282)
- Wuzhen to Xitang (shared taxi with the locals)
- Xitang to Luxu / Lili (both being undeveloped towns, by private taxi)
- Luxu / Lili to Tongli (continuing with the same private taxi)
- Tongli to Suzhou Train Station (local bus)
Thus began our journey into the canal-lined landscape of northern Zhejiang’s countryside, our first stop being arguably the most famous waterfront town of all. Wuzhen was among the first of these ancient towns to be developed for modern tourism at the turn of the millennium, and knowing how most Chinese tourism projects tend to end, we came with unflattering preconceptions, half-expecting to squeeze through crowded alleys full of rowdy domestic tourists and actors in ridiculous period costumes.
Even prior to arrival I was faced with a dilemma for our overnight stay. The ancient sections of Wuzhen were partitioned into two separately enclosed areas, both accessible through one combined admission ticket. Guesthouses operated by local peasants at Wuzhen East were simple and cheap (RMB 120 for a double room, or 250 with a canal-facing balcony), but requiring more tickets at RMB 100 per head for the second day’s sightseeing. Corporately-owned guesthouses at Wuzhen West were operated as more of a private resort (RMB 340 for a double, or 570 with a canal-facing balcony), but included breakfasts and the privilege of sightseeing on the second day. With plans to maximize the second morning for sightseeing, we took the RMB 570 room with the balcony at Wuzhen West, hoping that they hadn’t entirely destroyed all traces of the old lifestyle yet.
To be fair, Wuzhen West is never about untouched authenticity -- otherwise we wouldn’t have to travel to remote locales like Dangjiacun and Northern Wuyuan. Yes the town has successfully preserved its genuine Qing Dynasty architecture and townplan, but there should be no deception about how the government kicked the entire town’s original inhabitants out of their homes, citing that it was officially government land, then gave the land over to a private developer to convert into a money-making resort.
What Wuzhen West is about, is the picture-perfect quality of a carefully manicured corner of old China, combining the romance of its centuries-old arched bridges with the gentrified cleanliness expected of a first-world tourist destination. Nowhere will you see any overhead powerlines or satellite dishes -- the billion-yuan facelift had buried all signs of modern civilization into conduits beneath the cover of smooth cobblestone alleys.
Today the community appears alive and inhabited again on first glance, with the oily smoke from the deep-frying of Youtiao rising out of kitchen windows and its narrow alleys swarming with locals carrying out their morning routines at daybreak. The original inhabitants are long gone however, replaced by inn-keepers hired by the developer to live their temporary lives in the old-new town, operating its dozens of centrally managed guesthouses.
All visitors are ferried into town by traditional river punts, still hand-propelled by bamboo poles after all these years. Is this an authentic experience? Yes and no -- the flat-bottomed punts are still hand-crafted here in an old-fashioned drydock, thus allowing master shipbuilders to pass on their ancient trade to yet another generation. Most punters though were probably company-trained employees rather than the navigators of the old canal system. Besides, in this part of China many of the navigators were traditionally female.
Just to the right of the landing was the simple drydock, positioned perhaps strategically for all visitors to appreciate the continuation of this millennia-old tradition. Though power tools have long replaced the old two-man saws, shipbuilders still assemble and finish their beloved creations by hand today, just like the generations before them. It was at this sight where my negative perception of Wuzhen West gradually started to change -- I was starting to see a working town with real workers aside from inn-keepers and waitresses, even though the workers now have to live just outside of town.
The next building down the street was occupied by an indigo dyeing workshop for fabric production, where elderly craftsmen could be seen hand-prepping popular floral motifs from the Qing Dynasty to be transferred onto rolls of cotton textiles. While much of the production is carried out nowadays for demonstration purposes, genuine hand-printed items from traditional head-scarves to queen-sized bedspreads can still be purchased, for about five times the price of their mass-produced counterparts.
There is a certain sadness of touring these workshops in a protected environment as dying art forms, not dissimilar to seeing a white rhino in captivity. While we visited the soy sauce workshop I didn’t see anyone paying RMB 25 for a small bottle of hand-crafted soy sauce. To be honest the sauce didn’t impress me either, as I expected a deeper and more complex flavor out of a hand-made product. However there shouldn’t be any lack of consumers though, as the workshop also supplies its sauces to all the restaurants and guesthouses in Wuzhen West.
The town is dotted with a few small museums, the absolute best being the fascinating and yet grotesque displays at the Museum of 3-Inch Golden Lotus, dedicated to the (fortunately) extinct practice of foot binding. Fast walkers could breeze through the entire town in a few hours, though most visitors would at least stay until sunset for the popular light-up.
Widely reputed to possess the best night scenery among its peers, Wuzhen West grows noticeably more crowded towards the early evening when all of its arched footbridges become densely packed with camera-toting tourists. By 20:00 much of the crowd seems to gravitate towards the live music bars at the far end of town though, making for quite a relaxing after-dinner stroll along the banks of the canals.
One really cool activity on clear evenings is to get cozy on the wood-planked seats at the open-air theatre in the village square, watching black-and-white communist war epics played out of a creaking 16mm film projector on its flimsy tripod. It’s back to the good old 1950’s, before the Great Leap Forward and the next couple of decades too painful for those old enough to remember.
So I finally made it here, almost 20 years after hearing about these places from my father. Gone forever is that old crumbling townscape, teeming with locals livings in their ancestral houses. Wuzhen West is now considered one of the most successful models of planned mass tourism, built upon the ruthless cleansing of the original townsfolk and benefitting from the burgeoning middle class of the Yangtze Delta. I would have loved to arrive on a wobbly flat-bottom boat instead of the new high-speed train, but then, I was probably born 20 years too late.
TRANSPORTATION
While there are direct buses departing Shanghai’s Long Distance Bus Station and Hangzhou’s Jiubao Bus Station for Wuzhen, the more reliable and comfortable way is to simply take the high-speed train to Tongxiang, then follow the crowd of locals to take bus K282 just outside of the train station. In fact the combined price of the high-speed rail plus K282 is exactly the same as the long distance bus. The whole trip from Hangzhou to Wuzhen should take less than 90 minutes including transfers. If you’re coming from Suzhou however, your best bet is still the infrequent long distance bus from the Suzhou South Bus Station, also taking about 90 minutes.
Once arriving at the Wuzhen Bus Station (either by the long distance bus or the K282), the K350 minibus just outside the station whisks passengers to both Wuzhen East and Wuzhen West for a cheap RMB 1. We actually utilized the K350 a few times as a shuttle between Wuzhen West, Wuzhen East and the main part of town in between. Ignore the slow and wobbly 3-wheeled motorcycle taxis, unless you wish to pay the RMB 10 instead.
If you wish to do a little town-hopping like we did, the ancient town of Xitang is about 45 minutes to the east by shared taxi. This is actually the recommended mode of transport even for the locals, as one of our fellow riders on the taxi was a young guy who worked right here in Wuzhen. Public transportation isn’t impossible, but it involves 3 separate transfers on a long and convoluted route and is not recommended even for Chinese-speakers (leave me a message if you’re really determined). As for late 2012, the shared taxi cost RMB 60 per person in a taxi of 4.
ACCOMMODATION
The main advantage of overnighting within Wuzhen West is the right to stay for a second day’s sightseeing until you’re willing to exit the paid zone. After all, nobody checks your ticket once you’re in. This may be especially tempting for photographers wishing to capture the town’s quiet side in the early morning.
The cheapest bunk beds go for about RMB 80 at the Ziteng Youth Hostel, which also offers cheap double rooms with shared bathrooms. 2-star guesthouses offers better double rooms equipped with en suite western-style shower and toilets, starting at around RMB 340 during our visit. At RMB 470 the room upgrades to one with windows opening to the canal, and at the price of RMB 570 we reserved a room with its own private deck, perfect for a beer while watching the flat-bottom boats cruise by. The above photo was exactly the view from our deck, taken in the early morning.
A more thorough review of our hotel will be posted in an upcoming article.
RESTAURANTS
Based on other travelers’ recommendations we did pick out one well-reviewed restaurant within Wuzhen West, which turned out not quite as good compared to an excellent mom-and-pop eatery near Wuzhen East. Please see the upcoming article dedicated to Food and Hotel Reviews.
