Nanxi River, Zhejiang, China

4Jonathan B 5:00 PM Jul 21, 2014

Floating the Nanxi River
The Nanxi river area was very nice. I also visited Yantou village and Lenking village. The travel there was teh hardest part of our trip. Getting there is really hard if you don't know Chinese. For those who want to visit; from the frain station, get on bus 45 and take it til you reach a stop that has bus 108. This is different then the articles I found that were written in the late 90's. Those were outdated. Hop on bus 108 and take it to the "Anlanting " stop, get off and walk along the water til you reach the ferry. The ferry will cost 2 yuan. Take it across the river. From there, when you exit the ferry grounds, you will see a bunch of busses. These busses run north and go through Yantou.

4RETING 5:00 PM Apr 22, 2014

Plenty old villages for a weekday (or two)
There is nothing really spectacular here, but scenery and old villages around Nanxi River are charming enough even for the jaded China traveller to pass one weekday or even two. Try to avoid the weekends, of course. There were hardly any tourists anywhere during my trip, but the tourist infrastructure is already well built up around the main sights - I believe most local tourist do that rafting thing on the very gently flowing Nanxi River and that didn't interest me one bit. I managed to squeeze 5 villages - Linkeng, Yubei, Cangpo, Yantou and Furong - into one long day. When you arrive by bus from Oubei/Wenzhou it's easy enough to walk between Yantou and Furong and even Cangpo (this about 30 to 40 minutes on foot). For Linkeng and Yubei you'd need to hire one of the taxi vans that wait around Yantou bus station. The time you'd like to spend in any of these villages might largely depend on how many old South Chinese villages you have already seen. In my opinion the villages around here can be appreciated well enough in 30 to 60 minutes. The largest of the lot is Yantou, its old area west of the bus station sprawling well beyond the limits of the fenced in tourist zone of Lishui Jie. Lishui Jie is indeed a pretty unique structure and with a panorama of mountain and pagoda shows off some great kitschy China postcard pictures. Lanterns are lit when night falls around Lishui Jie. Surprisingly the houses on that roofed street are still lived in by real people going about their daily routine - there are only a few tourist shops. But that can change oh so quickly (see Fenghuang, Lijiang, the water village in Eastern Jiangsu und Northern Zhejiang). Lishui Jie was actually my last stop that day and I was indeed tempted to linger somewhat longer. But then the hotels in Yantou looked a pretty dismal lot. I didn't make the last bus back to Oubei (leaves about 5 pm-ish), but there plenty of taxis for a few hours still, that fill up rather quickly for 20 to 30 RMB per seat (depending how many people squeeze in).