Why Are China’s Old Towns So Boring?

"Old Towns in China often feel formulaic and are, in my opinion, a waste of time", says Mei Zhang, founder of WildChina. 

This article was first published on Caixin.

On an early winter morning jog in the old town of Shaxi in Southwest China’s Yunnan province, I met an old man and his barking dog and a lady carefully slicing sheets of bean curd in front of her house. The engine of a nearby tractor was roaring, but she was seemingly oblivious to the noise. Instead, she stayed focused on slicing her bean curd with a homemade cutter. She dries them under the sun until they are crispy, and stores them or sells them at the local market. “They are delicious if you deep fry them. They puff up like a shrimp cracker. Goes great with drinking baijiu,” she explained to me, following up with a sales pitch: “Why don’t you take a kilo back to Beijing?”

An ethnic Bai woman slices bean curd in Shaxi. Image by Mei Zhang

This is my experience of visiting a pleasant old town in China. I travel to seek out such encounters. Staying in a local boutique lodge where you can look out the window to see the ladies drying chamomile, bean curd sheets, or porcini on the rooftops. I like to be close to people and close to life.

Sadly, my experience isn’t typical. I’ve often heard from travelers that “every city or town that we visited had an ‘Old Town’ in it. We felt that we saw them all and they had a somewhat repetitive feel.” And I couldn’t agree more. Old Towns in China often feel formulaic and are, in my opinion, a waste of time.

But why? We have a thousand different ways to cook noodles, but why is there only one recipe for an ‘Old Town’?

The time-tested formula should be credited to two towns: Lijiang in Yunnan and Pingyao in north China’s Shanxi province. Both became UNESCO World Culture Heritage sites on December 7, 1997.

Pingyao in Shanxi province. Image by Unai Sarasola via Flickr

The successes of these old towns are dazzling, and they kicked off the entire “Old Town” industry. Closely following Lijiang and Pingyao was Fenghuang in Central China’s Hunan province, Yixian near the Yellow Mountains in East China’s Anhui province, Dali in Yunnan, as well as a few other ‘famous towns’ in Hubei and Henan provinces that no one knows. Both Pingyao and Lijiang towns have achieved astronomical growth in tourist revenue and number of visitors. From 1997 to 2013, Pingyao’s revenue from tourism grew from $2 million to $850 million! Lijiang, which started off with a local population of 250,000, attracted 40 million visitors in 2018 alone.

Visitor numbers are the yardstick by which these old towns measure their success. In China, there is only one direction to grow — up. To grow so fast, operators must have a relentless focus on scalability and crowd management. Anything not scalable is not worth pursuing. Unique experiences, people-to-people connections, tailor-made experiences — forget those. “Volume is king.” The tourism industry in China happily embraces the doctrine.

But the market is changing. Chinese tourists are now also demanding a more meaningful travel experience.

So can Chinese old towns change? We hope so. Here are some I visited recently and found to be a breath of fresh air, though I don’t know how long they will stay that way.

Shaxi, Yunnan  

Shaxi is a sleepy little village with an old town that hasn’t all quite turned into a tourist trap full of trinket shops. It’s located in Yunnan, halfway between the two famous towns of Dali and Lijiang. Historically, it served as a major rest stop and market town on the tea and horse caravan route that connected Tibet to the rest of China. The village is filled with old houses, an old open-air opera stage, and a temple.

Shaxi in Yunnan province. Image by neferti49 via Flickr

You can catch a bus from Lijiang Airport or Dali’s Old Town. If you avoid the Chinese national holidays, you will always be able to find a place to stay and plenty of locals willing to take you on hikes.

Liuba, Shaanxi  

Northwest China’s Shaanxi province’s best-known site is, of course, the museum for the Terracotta Army in Xi’an. It drives the province’s ‘yellow earth’ image to heart, causing me to wonder if Shaanxi exhausted its greenery over thousands of years of human habitation.

Well, Liuba, a little town tucked away in the Qinling Mountains in the southwestern part of the province, breaks that image once and for all. It’s all forest and mountains. It is a town that prides itself on its Taoist way of life — retire when you reach your peak.

Wanbook Store Inn, in Liuba. Image via Trip.Com

To get there, fly to Hanzhong and then hire a car for an hour-long drive to the town. There is a little bookstore-turned-lodge on an old street. It’s a simple wooden structure but tastefully done — great for sitting around, drinking tea, and reading.

Songyang, Zhejiang  

Songyang is a small town tucked away in the southern mountains of East China’s Zhejiang province. There’s nothing special about the town itself, except that it has a long tradition of tea growing and a dense cluster of ancient villages hidden in the surrounding mountains.

Tea sellers in Songyang, Zhejiang province. Image by Mei Zhang

The town is currently going through a fascinating transformation. In 2014, I met the county chief Wang Jun. He is one of those young local leaders, around 40 years old, full of drive and new ideas. He met us for dinner, a group of industry practitioners and architects from Tsinghua University. Wang had no interest in building a Lijiang-style old town. He wanted the best architects, artists, and scholars to bring a fresh modern breath to the town. Reinvigorate the countryside with culture and art — that is Wang’s strategy.

And that’s exactly what he has done. Well-known architect Xu Tiantian, a graduate of the Harvard School of Design, has built a string of architecturally stunning projects here, including the popular Da Mu Shan Tea House and several museums showcasing local traditions like sugar- and tofu-making. Peng Haidong, who has a doctorate in urban planning, is developing the center of the old town, repurposing an old temple complex into an art gallery mixed with a teahouse/cafe, bookstore, community space, and a boutique hotel.

There is also a bustling tea market that opens at 5 am. Tea sellers display their products — all different grades of green tea in huge plastic bags as tall as a 5-year-old. They sift green tea leaves on enormous bamboo sieves. It’s one of the liveliest tea markets I have ever visited.

You can take a 75-minute train from the provincial capital of Hangzhou to the nearby city of Lishui, or fly to the neighboring city of Quzhou and hire a car to drive one hour to Songyang.

Get away from the formula  

If you're interested in seeing one of these non-formulaic old towns, get in touch with us today. We can suggest more places to visit and help you get there.

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WildChina was born on the sacred slopes of Mount Kailash in the Himalayas. Since WildChina’s first-ever trip in 2000, we have helped thousands of travelers enjoy life-changing experiences in every corner of this vast and endlessly inspiring nation. We never crop out reality or cocoon our travelers in a tourist bubble. We believe in the power of travel to transform, inspire, and bring people closer together, and we work tirelessly to perfect every detail for our guests. It’s this dedication, expertise, and passion for travel in China that makes us an award-winning industry leader.