City guide · Zhejiang
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Shaoxing made objects change and times overlap; I kept losing track of what dynasty I was standing in, as if I had crossed through and waited a thousand years. — A traveller's note in the source guide
A traveller's note in the source guide
The Jiangnan elegance here comes out of the bone, out of accumulated history. This soil is too rich, too good at feeding people. It is the water town among water towns, the Jiangnan above Jiangnan. — A traveller's note in the source guide
A traveller's note in the source guide
Most people arrive in Shaoxing carrying a textbook. Lu Xun set his best-known writing here and the city has organised itself around that fact: the house, the ancestral home, Sanwei Study where he sat as a schoolboy, Baicao Garden behind it with its vegetable beds and the smooth stone rim of the well. You can walk the whole thing in a morning and it costs nothing. Get there before ten, before the tour groups.
What surprises people is how much older than Lu Xun the place is. It was founded in 490 BC as the capital of the state of Yue, which is why Goujian's business of sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall belongs to this ground; Qin Shi Huang made it the seat of Kuaiji commandery in 222 BC, and the name came and went through the Han, the Sui and the Song until the city was formally named Shaoxing in 1983. Two and a half thousand years of that sit inside a town you can cross by bus for ¥1.
It is a water city first. The Jianhu system gathers the streams off Kuaiji Mountain and holds the whole town slightly above the ground, and along it sit the things the source guide calls the character of Shaoxing — the black-tiled gatehouses, the stone bridges, the old opera stages, the towpath, and the boats with black awnings over them. Take one. It is the one thing here you cannot do anywhere else.
Then there is the ink and the wine. At Lan Ting, Wang Xizhi wrote the preface that every Chinese schoolchild has tried to copy. At Shen Garden, Lu You and Tang Wan wrote the poems that kept a failed romance alive for nine hundred years. And the yellow wine, brewed with Jianhu water and drunk warm from a small blue-and-white cup, is what holds the whole thing together. Two days covers the classics; three if you want the quarry faces at Keyan or the five-stage falls at Wuxie.
Shaoxing
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
The best-preserved historic block in the city centre: the house, the ancestral home, Sanwei Study, Baicao Garden, plus the west wing of the ancestral house that never used to be open, the restored Zhou and Shou gatehouses, the Tugu shrine where Ah Q slept, and the folk-customs garden drawn from his stories. Free with ID. Be there when it opens.
The black-awning boat is the thing Shaoxing is a picture of. It is hired whole, sits three, and is sculled from the stern while you go under bridges built when the city was already old. At ¥50 for the run from Lu Xun's home to Shen Garden it is also the best value experience in town.
One afternoon in 353 AD: Wang Xizhi and forty-one friends, a purification rite, cups of wine floated down a winding stream, and a preface written to the poems that came out of it. The Goose Pool, the Curving Water Pavilion and the Imperial Stele Pavilion are still there, and the pavilion carries Kangxi's copy of the whole preface on the front and Qianlong's poem on the back.
A Song private garden with a Song gourd pond, a Song well and a Song mound still in it, and a love story attached that has lasted nine hundred years. By day it is a garden, ¥40. By night it is a performance, ¥70, with a Song-style opening ceremony, lantern walking and the Shuanggui hall show at 19:40.
Cangqiao Straight Street is river, houses and stone paving under five old bridges, and it has been called a living display of Chinese heritage because people still live in it. Add Baziqiao — a Song bridge shaped like the character for eight, an ancient grade separation — plus Xixiaohe and Shimenkan, and you have the best afternoon in the city for nothing.
Shaoxing wine is made with Jianhu water and has been since the Spring and Autumn period. Locals call it old wine. Sit in a canalside tavern, have a pot warmed, drink it small with fennel beans and drunken chicken around it. At Xianheng, where Kong Yiji drank, a bowl is about ¥24 and a plate of beans ¥10.
Suggested routes
Everything that made Shaoxing famous, in one long day, in the order the guide sets out.
Start at East Lake, out at the foot of Ruokui Mountain where a flooded quarry made cliffs, caves, stone bridges and black water. Take a wupeng boat in and walk back out along the shore so you see it from both levels — about 20 minutes on the water, ¥85 or ¥75 a boat.
Sit on a stone bench with fennel beans when your legs give out, and listen for the water-side opera on the lake. It may well be a recording, but it works anyway.
Stops: East LakeWupeng boatWater-side opera
Into town to Lu Xun's home. Collect the free ticket with your ID before 16:00, then walk it properly — the house, the ancestral home, Sanwei Study with its corner table, and Baicao Garden at the back.
Eat nearby before or after: proper Shaoxing dishes and genuine local wine. Xianheng is on the same street; Xunbaoji is a short walk into Cangqiao Straight Street.
Stops: Lu Xun's former residenceSanwei StudyBaicao GardenLunch on Lu Xun Middle Road
Shen Garden is five minutes' walk from Lu Xun's home. Do it in daylight for the garden and then decide whether to come back for the ¥70 night performance at 18:30.
Finish the day reading the two poems on the wall — Lu You's and Tang Wan's — which is the reason anyone comes here at all.
Stops: Shen GardenShen Garden by Night
The route the guide calls free of detours: literature on one day, ink and water on the other.
Arrive by train and drop your bag; treat Lu Xun's home as your transport hub, since it is the busiest, best-connected corner of the city. First go and collect any ticket you booked online.
Then out to Kuaiji Mountain for Dayu's mausoleum — the ¥50 through-ticket also covers the bird garden and Incense Burner Peak. Climb the spirit way past twelve pairs of stone beasts, over the Yugong bridge and through the star gate to the stele pavilion.
Afternoon at Lan Ting, the holy place of calligraphy. If you are lucky you catch a curved-water ceremony in progress. Back to Lu Xun's home for dinner at Xunbaoji — half portions, so order the signature dishes — and sleep nearby.
Stops: Lu Xun's former residenceDayu's mausoleum, Kuaiji MountainLan TingDinner at Xunbaoji Zhuangyuanlou
Sleep in, then bus to East Lake. There is one route and it is simple: walk in along both banks of the lake. Eat Shaoxing specialities near the lake afterwards.
Back to Lu Xun's home in the afternoon; Shen Garden is a five-minute walk from it and Cangqiao Straight Street is close by too, so do all three together. Zhou Enlai's ancestral home fits in if there is time.
Finish in the old streets — stinky tofu, fennel beans, a pot of wine — and buy a bottle to take home. A rickshaw ride through the lanes is ¥3–5 to start.
Stops: East LakeShen GardenLu Xun's former residenceCangqiao Straight Street
Two days of city, one of suburb, one of countryside — the full range of what the prefecture holds.
Arrive at Shaoxing station, eat something homely nearby, then out to Kuaiji Mountain — climb the thousand steps, stand under the statue of Dayu. Down again and bus to Lan Ting for the pavilions and the curved water. Sleep in Yuecheng district.
Stops: Dayu's mausoleumLan Ting
East Lake first, boat in and walk out. Then back to town: Lu Xun's home, Shen Garden and Cangqiao Straight Street are all within a short walk of each other, so do them in one go. Zhou Enlai's ancestral home if you still have energy. Same hotel.
Stops: East LakeShen GardenLu Xun's former residenceCangqiao Straight Street
Early bus out to Keyan, where the ¥115 combined ticket also covers Jianhu and Luzhen, and do all three in order. Much of it is rebuilt, but the water-town feel is real and Luzhen has performers playing Ah Q and Xianglin's wife. Eat at one of the inns inside or bring your own.
Try the fennel beans Kong Yiji loved, then move on and sleep in Zhuji.
Stops: KeyanJianhuLuzhen
Sleep in, then the Wuxie scenic area in Zhuji — five successive waterfalls dropping through a gorge between two peaks, water that has come ten-odd kilometres down from a source over 1,000 m up, with bamboo forest around it. ¥80, 07:30–17:00.
With more time, add Xishi's home village or Anchang old town on the way back.
Stops: Wuxie waterfallsXishi's home villageAnchang old town
Sights
Free with ID
The best-preserved and most culturally loaded historic block in central Shaoxing, and the reason most visitors come. It restores the house he grew up in and the places in it that anyone who read him at school will recognise, and it opens parts that were never open before — the west wing of the ancestral house, the restored Zhou and Shou family gatehouses, the Tugu shrine where Ah Q slept, and the folk-customs garden built from his stories. This is the place to read the work against the ground it came out of.
Tip Go at opening. By ten the tour groups are in Baicao Garden and the whole point of the place — standing in it quietly — is gone.
Song garden, and a night show
Originally the private garden of a family named Shen, and already a famous garden in Shaoxing under the Song, when it was several times its present size. What survives from the Song is the gourd pond, the well and the earthen mound; the north-east corner holds the Lu You memorial hall. The reason to come is the story: Lu You and his cousin Tang Wan, married and forced apart, meeting again here years later and writing the poems that are still on the wall.
Tip Do both if you can. The ¥40 daylight visit is the garden; the ¥70 night one is a piece of theatre — Song opening ceremony, night market, lantern-lit walking and the Shuanggui hall show.
The calligraphy shrine
Known worldwide for one piece of writing. In 353 AD Wang Xizhi and forty-one friends held a purification rite here, set cups of wine floating on a winding stream, and wrote poems; Wang wrote the preface to the collection, and it became the most copied piece of calligraphy in the language. The Goose Pool, the Curving Water Pavilion, the Lan Ting stele, the Imperial Stele Pavilion and the Right General's shrine are all still standing, among thick bamboo and a fast clear stream.
Tip Inside the pavilion there is a sand table and a stone slab for practising characters — use them. The slight rise behind the pavilion is the best background for a photograph in the whole garden.
Boat in, walk out
At the foot of Ruokui Mountain east of the city, where Qin Shi Huang is said to have stopped to water his horses on his eastern progress. A quarry that flooded, so cliffs, caves, stone bridges and dark water are interleaved, and the best way round it is one you choose deliberately: take a wupeng boat in and walk back out along the bank, so you get both views. There is water-side opera on the lake, and benches to sit on with fennel beans.
Tip Since 1 January 2013 the boatman must give the full commentary for the whole route free of charge, and may not ask passengers for anything. Queues form on public holidays.
The through-ticket
The burial place of Dayu, the hero who tamed the floods and the founder-king of the first dynasty, on the south-eastern edge of the city. Three parts: the tomb, the clan shrine and the temple. Enter by the spirit way under the arch that carries the name in a statesman's calligraphy, between twelve pairs of stone beasts, then over the Yugong bridge and through the blue-stone star gate and up to the stele pavilion. The shrine of the Si clan holds the thousand-year-old Yu well; the temple runs screen wall, stele pavilion, meridian gate, worship hall and great hall.
Tip Worth doing for the spirit way alone. You come for antiquities and leave with a bit of borrowed luck, which is a fair exchange for ¥50.
The Ming brick house
A brick-and-tile house in Ming style behind a black bamboo-slat gatehouse of the kind Shaoxing does better than anywhere, where the Zhou family lived for generations — which is why the premier always called himself a Shaoxing man. Three halls, each separated by a skywell and linked by stone corridors, laid out with real formality and in an unmistakably local idiom. Afterwards walk over to the Baziqiao quarter for the street life.
Tip Only ¥18 and half an hour, and it is the quickest way to see what a Shaoxing gatehouse looks like from the inside.
Activities
The one essential
The boat is named for the black-painted bamboo awning over it, and Shaoxing being a water town, the town is a world of boats. Hired whole, three seats, sculled from the stern; the narrow hull means you sit in the middle and do not stand up. The routes are fixed and the fares are published, but the operations are contracted out and prices drift upward, so confirm at the pier before you board.
Tip Settle the price before you get in — the guide says some boats will negotiate. From the Qianguan lane landing it is a ten-minute walk to Lu Xun's home.
The evening
Shaoxing's night-tour piece, and the one thing in town you need to book an evening for. The sequence is a welcome at the pier, a Song-dynasty night market, the formal opening of the garden, walking the garden by lantern in the company of maids, the village wine ritual, the presentation of the blessing cakes and the gong that opens the opera. You then see the Shuanggui hall performance, which is the heart of it.
Tip The hall performance is the reason to pay the extra ¥30 over the day ticket. Arrive by 18:30 to get through the garden before the show.
Local custom
Shexi is the old Shaoxing custom of staging opera for the earth god at the spring and autumn sacrifices, to thank and to ask. Lu Xun wrote that foreigners find Chinese opera too loud and too violent for a theatre, but that seen from a distance across a field it has its own quality. Ancient stages survive at Dong'an, Renjiaqiao, Fengyi, Dongzhou and Binshe, and at East Lake you can hear it from a wupeng boat on the water.
Tip Honest note from a traveller in the guide: at the far end of East Lake the opera is audible from a long way off, and people standing nearby were saying it was not live. It still sounds right with that view.
Free, and the best of it
Someone in the guide describes an old Shaoxing street as salted fish and salted pork hanging glossy under the eaves, a childhood memory, stone paving, a courtyard covered in creeper. Most of the old streets are Ming and Qing, built one street to one canal or one canal between two streets, full of gatehouses, stone bridges, food shops and craft stalls. The ones to walk are Cangqiao Straight Street, Xixiaohe Straight Street, Baziqiao Straight Street, the Lu Xun quarter and Shimenkan.
Tip One traveller cycled from Lu Xun's home to Cangqiao in about fifteen minutes while the rickshaw man quoted him classical allusions the whole way. The street was nearly empty of visitors and full of residents.
Seasonal
The thing Wang Xizhi's party actually did: cups of wine set floating down a winding stream, and when one stopped in front of you, you drank it and composed a poem. It is re-enacted at Lan Ting, and it is not a performance for tourists only — visitors join in with enthusiasm, some sing opera, some compose, and one traveller watched a child deliver his father's poem for him.
Tip It has the feel of a festival rather than a show. Go during the calligraphy festival if your dates are flexible.
Timing
Two events in the Shaoxing year are worth moving your dates for. The Lan Ting international calligraphy festival has run since 1985 and includes the rite of purification, the curved-water ceremony, exhibitions, calligraphy auctions and an international symposium. The public sacrifice to Dayu has been held at the Yu temple every Qingming since 1995, and each year is larger than the last.
Tip April to June is high water and carries most of the spring festivals; September to November carries the wine and osmanthus ones. Either window is better than midsummer.
Food
The snack Kong Yiji made immortal, and the first thing to order. Originally just a cheap everyday nibble in Shaoxing, good value and filling, it became the standing wine accompaniment in every tavern in town and county because women and children would spend a few coppers on it too. Salty, dry, faintly aniseed, designed to make you drink.
Shaoxing is the home of huadiao wine, so of course there is drunken chicken: poached, then steeped in it. It smells strongly of wine, the flesh stays tender and juicy, and the taste keeps coming back at you afterwards. Cold drunken chicken out of the fridge on a muggy summer day is one of the better things you can eat in this part of China.
Meigancai is a cheap, traditional Shaoxing preserve — glossy black, deep in flavour, keeps forever — and braised with pork belly it produces the dish everyone names. The meat is soft and thoroughly seasoned and there is less fat than you expect. It is salty. It is meant to be. It is eaten with rice.
Compulsory reading if you want to understand Shaoxing food. It is fermented in amaranth-stem brine and comes steamed or fried; fried is common because it is easier to eat, steamed has more of the domestic, home-cooked taste and a real savouriness under the smell. People who like it move towards the smell. People who do not move away fast.
A local sweet that looks like a small round white hat: a baked shell of flour and egg like a little bowl, capped with whipped egg white like a snow mountain. Better looking than it has any right to be and better eating than that. Worth trying once, from an old-street stall.
Locals call it old wine. Brewing here goes back to the Spring and Autumn period, and the wine is made with Jianhu water by a traditional process, which is why it tops the Chinese yellow-wine category. Guyue Longshan jiafan and Shaoxing huadiao in sealed jars are the two names to look for. Drink it warmed, from a small blue-and-white cup, in a canalside tavern.
Shaoxing cooking is Jiangnan water-town cooking and it is savoury — at the very least, not sweet. Freshwater fish, shrimp and river shellfish, poultry and beans are the main materials; the cooking aims for crisp outside and soft and glutinous inside, for stock that is the dish's own, for light oil and for no chilli at all.
Where to eat
Where Kong Yiji drank
Most visitors come here for Lu Xun, and this is the house he put into a story. Famous name, but the ordering is closer to a canteen than a restaurant: you load a meal card and then walk up to the counter and point at finished dishes, which apparently is how the place has worked for a hundred years. The braised pork with dried mustard greens is unambiguously the best thing on the counter; everything else is decent Jiangnan cooking. A bowl of wine is about ¥24 and a plate of fennel beans ¥10.
Best value in town
Properly local Shaoxing cooking, and the useful thing about it is that most dishes can be ordered in half portions, so one person can eat four things instead of one. The signature scholar chicken, drunken crab and drunken chicken are all well marinated and the yellow wine is sweet and easy to drink. The room is done out in an antique style and it is busy — expect to queue at peak hours.
Snacks, not meals
The food you actually remember in Shaoxing is bought standing up: stinky tofu fried or steamed, fennel beans by the plate, cream xiaopan from a bakery window, hand-peeled bamboo shoots, and a pot of warmed wine at a canalside table. Cangqiao Straight Street and the lanes around Lu Xun's home are where they cluster, and the point of them is that they go with the street rather than with a tablecloth.
Lunch with a view
Eat Shaoxing specialities at a restaurant near East Lake after you have walked the shore, or bring your own food into the scenic area. There are benches along the bank and the sensible plan is to sit on one with a bag of fennel beans and let the lake do the work.
Eat inside or bring it
If you are doing the ¥115 combined ticket out at Keyan, you can eat at the inns inside the scenic area — the Lu family inn, Yishiju tavern and Taisheng tavern — or bring your own. The fennel beans Kong Yiji loved are the thing to try here, in the fictional town built out of his fiction.
Plan ahead
Shaoxing does not have many restaurants, and it is common to walk a whole street and pass only two or three. The highest concentration is around East Street and Lu Xun's former residence, which is another reason to base yourself on Lu Xun Middle Road. If you have a specific place in mind, check its hours before you set off across town for it.
Where to stay
Read this first
Staying in Shaoxing is easy and the choice is obvious: somewhere on or near Lu Xun Middle Road in the centre, where the transport, the food and most of the sights are all within walking distance. That one street has everything from a five-star like Xianheng Grand Hotel down to small guesthouses with very good value, which is why the guide's own recommendation is simply to stay there.
Inside the old quarter
It sits inside Lu Xun's former residence quarter, and you open the window onto the picture: wupeng boats, stone paving, black felt hats, the canal, the stone bridge. The building is the former Song family gatehouse, a water-town house several hundred years old, kept in the traditional style and in genuine Ming and Qing condition — a courtyard layout with two yards as common space. The downside is that some rooms are not well soundproofed.
Quiet, by the park
On Huanshan Road, with Fushan Park in front of it and Shaoxing Hotel and the Shaoxing friendship hall next door — green, fresh air and sun. It is designed in the idiom of a Shaoxing house: plain, quiet, warm, with cane chairs, stone stools, old wood tables and Chinese lanterns that visitors notice immediately. The four-bed rooms are a bit cramped, but the value is high.
The garden hotel
In the centre, across the road from Fushan Park, near the railway station and the coach station, with Sleeping Dragon Hill behind it — the hill named for Goujian sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall. The buildings are a plain, elegant complex of white walls, black tiles, winding corridors, little bridges, running water and planting, strongly local in character. It is a conference hotel, comfortable and fully equipped; the discounted rooms are small with bathrooms that are barely three-star, so book a deluxe room if that matters.
The old five-star
At the south end of Jiefang Road, the busiest commercial street in town. An old-style five-star and fully equipped; the lobby is large and dimly lit and the staff greet everyone who comes in. Rooms are big and the windows look onto Tashan Park and its trees. There are a lot of complimentary items — laundry and sauna are free — but the fittings are showing their age.
The mid-range pick
Right in the centre on the main shopping street, with Feilai Hill park beside it, so transport, sightseeing and shopping are all close. An older hotel with some rooms refurbished; the deluxe rooms are comfortable and every room has broadband, with computers in the business rooms. There is a café with real character, which is a good place to sit down for half an hour.
Shopping
Wearing one is the marker of a Shaoxing man. Modern ones are made of wool, which takes water without soaking it up and shrugs off mud, so it keeps the rain and the sun off, and the turned-up brim is used to hold a cigarette or a few notes. The cheapest, most recognisable thing you can buy here, and it packs flat.
Zhuji, under Shaoxing, is the pearl country. Ninety-eight per cent of the world's freshwater pearls come from China and more than eighty per cent of China's come from Zhuji, so the range is wide and the prices are low. Shanxiahu pearl market has a thousand stalls and everything from jewellery and pendants to ornaments, pearl supplements and pearl cosmetics.
Called mouldy tofu or vegetarian mock meat locally, and best eaten at breakfast with rice porridge. The red variety's brine is used to braise pork, which is a genuine local dish with a strong flavour; the wine-lees variety is used to steam tofu with spring onion, which does things to your appetite. Less famous than the wine and worth carrying home anyway.
A noted local cake, said to have been one of the eight tribute items sent to the Qing palace, and long known by the nickname of capital-bound crackers. Polished rice flour with cloves, cardamom, angelica, nutmeg, star anise and a ground spice mix, bound with white sugar, shaped and baked over white charcoal — golden not burnt, hard but not rock-hard, crisp and sweet, and held to settle the stomach and open the appetite.
Salty, fragrant, with a long finish and it keeps indefinitely — people here still cure and sun-dry it at home as a matter of course. Beyond eating it on its own it goes into everything: pork belly, roast bamboo, braised fish, chicken, steamed tofu. Buy a bag to cook pork with at home and the smell will carry down the street.
Shaoxing and Shangyu are where Chinese Yue celadon began, and it has a long history and a long reach — tribute to the imperial court, and a major Tang export. Thin body, even glaze, a blue-green colour that is bright and soft at once. If you like ceramics, this is the thing to carry.
Jiefang Road is the main commercial street, continuing to Lu Xun Road for Xianheng, Lu Xun's home and Cangqiao Straight Street and on to Shengli Road for the Qiu Jin statue and City Square. Shaoxing antique market by Baicao Garden has sixty-odd permanent shops and around a hundred temporary stalls, with dealers from Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing. The rule: do not buy specialities inside the scenic areas. One traveller's summary is blunt — it is a swindle. Use a supermarket; Walmart under City Square has a specialities section.
Transport
Shaoxing has no civil airport of its own, but Hangzhou Xiaoshan is only about 30 km away and a 30-minute drive, and it has more than 160 routes to 104 destinations, so flying in and bussing across is the normal arrangement. The airport bus runs to Shaoxing city and to Keqiao new district, stopping at Keqiao by the Jinghu Hotel and in the city by the Margaret Hotel near the railway station square.
The passenger station is Shaoxing station, at Xiaochengbei bridge, north of the Margaret shopping centre; the Xiao–Yong railway runs through the city and a high-speed station is under construction, with fast trains currently calling at the existing one. About 37 trains a day run to Hangzhou station or Hangzhou South, 28 minutes on a fast train to two hours on a slow one, and about 1 hour 40 minutes east to Ningbo. Every train originating in Ningbo stops here, and you can book tickets from here for services originating in Hangzhou or Shanghai.
Three long-distance stations. The central station on the east side of Chang'an roundabout on Zhongxing North Road handles cross-province services to Wenzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou, Huzhou, Xiaoshan, Changshu, Guangde, Cangnan, Bengbu, Nanchang and Xiamen; the east station on Huancheng East Road runs to the county cities — Zhuji, Xinchang, Shangyu, Shengzhou — and neighbours; the west station on the Second Ring West Road runs provincial routes plus Jiangsu, Fujian and Jiangxi. From Hangzhou East station, the ordinary coach is ¥20 and will let you get off at Keyan, while the ¥24 express runs straight through to the central station.
Shaoxing is small. There are twenty-odd bus routes; the ones visitors use are 8 and 88 to Lu Xun's home, 1 to East Lake, 3, 23 and 303 to Lan Ting, and the 7 and 10 city loops, at ¥1 to start and ¥2 for a full ride. Two sightseeing lines leave the railway station: east to Houshan via Zhou Enlai's home and East Lake, returning past Qingteng Studio, the Lu Xun memorial, Shen Garden, Dayu's mausoleum and Incense Burner Peak; west to Lan Ting via Zhou Enlai's home, the Lu Xun memorial, Tashan and Qiu Jin's home. Taxis start at ¥7 for 2.5 km, then ¥2 a km plus ¥1 fuel surcharge, and the flag fall covers most city trips; Keyan is about ¥35 each way. Tricycles — pedal, electric and motor — start at ¥3–5.
Driving in from Shanghai is about 180 km and 2–2.5 hours: the Shanghai–Hangzhou expressway via Fengjing, Jiaxing, Tudian and Chang'an, onto the Hangzhou ring road towards Shaoxing and Ningbo, past Xiasha and Xiaoshan onto the Hangyong expressway, off at the Shaoxing exit after Guali and Keqiao, then straight into the city — the toll gate is about 8 km out. From Nanjing it is the Nanjing–Hangzhou expressway, the ring road and the Huyong expressway to the same exit, about 4 hours. From Hangzhou, allow about 1 hour 20 minutes.
Tips
The one complaint everyone has: conductors on the buses to Keyan and Lan Ting call the stops in Shaoxing dialect and it is genuinely hard to follow. Say your stop clearly when you board, or watch the signs yourself, and if you are coming back by bus, find out when the last one leaves.
A bottle of water inside costs about ¥8. Stop at a shop outside the gate first. The same applies to food on day trips out of town — bring it in with you.
Sunscreen, something for heatstroke and something for mosquitoes, plus a small fan. Shaoxing's annual mean is 16.5°C but the extremes reach 39.5°C, and the canals and old lanes are humid.
There are vendors working the scenic areas carrying their stock by hand and shoulder, and they are too eager for a reason: the goods are usually not genuine and the quality is a gamble. Buy at a large supermarket or a specialist shop in the city instead.
Tickets are free but capacity is capped at 2,000 a day for online reservations, and they are issued only between 08:20 and 16:00. Book through the memorial museum or the Shaoxing tourism site, and carry ID.
Wupeng operations are contracted out and the fares drift upward; confirm the price at the pier before you board. The hull is narrow — sit in the middle and do not stand up. Presentation boats take four, ordinary ones three, including a baby in arms.
Practical
Almost everything worth doing in Shaoxing is either free or under ¥50. The boat is the one thing you should spend money on without thinking about it.
| Main tickets | Lu Xun's residence free with ID; Shen Garden ¥40 day / ¥70 night; Lan Ting ¥40; East Lake ¥40; Kuaiji Mountain ¥50; Zhou Enlai's ancestral home ¥18; Keyan–Jianhu–Luzhen ¥115; Wuxie ¥80 |
|---|---|
| Wupeng boats | Per boat of three: Lu Xun–Shen Garden or –Xianheng ¥50; City Square ¥60/80/100/180; East Lake ¥75/85; Baziqiao ¥60/80; Dayu's mausoleum ¥50, sculled boat ¥10 a head |
| Opening hours | Lu Xun's residence 08:20–17:00, tickets 08:20–16:00; Shen Garden 08:00–17:00, night 18:30–21:30; Lan Ting, East Lake, Dayu's mausoleum 08:00–17:00; Keyan 07:30–17:00 summer, 08:00–16:30 winter |
| Airport bus | Hangzhou Xiaoshan to Shaoxing city ¥30, to Keqiao ¥20, 40–50 minutes. From the airport 07:20–20:00; from Shaoxing 06:00–18:30 |
| Trains | About 37 a day to Hangzhou, 28 minutes to 2 hours; Ningbo about 1 hour 40 minutes. Enquiries 0575-88022584 |
| Local transport | Bus ¥1–2; taxi ¥7 for 2.5 km then ¥2 a km plus ¥1, hotline 0575-85333333; tricycles ¥3–5 |
| Tourist services | Shaoxing tourism bureau 0575-85223031; complaints 12301 and 96118; visitor centre 0575-85145000; wupeng boat enquiries 0575-88369970 and 88369963 |
| Hospitals | Shaoxing Second Hospital, 141 Yan'an Road, 0575-88055555; Shaoxing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 641 Renmin Middle Road, 0575-88644082 |
| Post and banks | Lu Xun Road post office, 82 Lu Xun West Road, 0575-5133234; Keqiao post office, Keqiao, Shaoxing county, 0575-4078267; Bank of Communications, 320–324 Zhongxing South Road, 0575-88322213; ICBC, 483 Lu Xun Middle Road, 0575-85118092 |
| Climate | Subtropical monsoon transition, four distinct seasons, annual mean 16.5°C, extremes 39.5°C and −10.1°C. Good all year; best April–June and September–November |
Background
Shaoxing's culture runs back to the Hemudu culture of the middle Neolithic, more than 7,000 years ago, and its history reads like a chronicle of the whole region. It was founded in 490 BC as the capital of the state of Yue. In 222 BC the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, took Yue and made the land into Kuaiji commandery, administering more than twenty counties across what is now Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In 106 BC six more counties were added; in 129 AD the commandery was split, with the land south of the Qiantang keeping the name Kuaiji, and today's Shaoxing inside it.
In 589 Emperor Wen of Sui established Wu prefecture and renamed Kuaiji commandery as Kuaiji county, under Wu; Wu prefecture later became Shaoxing prefecture, which after 1949 became the Shaoxing people's government, and in 1983 Shaoxing city under Zhejiang. Two and a half thousand years of administration on one site, which is why the place feels settled rather than preserved.
Shaoxing cannot be separated from its water. The Jianhu system gathers the water of thirty sources on Kuaiji Mountain and lifts the whole town slightly, and along it are spread the things that make the picture: the Cloud Bone monolith and the great Buddha, the old town, the stone bridges, the towpath, the opera stages, the black-awning boats. Distant hills in shadow, green duckweed close in, mist, vapour — the guide describes it as a long scroll of ink wash laid out across the crossing channels and harbours.
Boats are the transport and the symbol. Named for the black-painted bamboo awning, they move light and rest idle, alone and particular or in fleets: the guide calls them the spirit of the water town and its landscape at once. Piers for them sit at City Square, Lu Xun's home, East Lake, Dayu's mausoleum, Keyan, Keqiao pier and Jianhu.
The literature is not only Lu Xun, though he is the reason most people come. The Preface to the Poems Collected at the Orchid Pavilion was written in 353 AD, in the ninth year of the Yonghe era of Emperor Mu of Jin, when Wang Xizhi and forty-one others including Xie An and Sun Chuo held a purification rite at Lan Ting in Shanyin, today's Shaoxing. He wrote the preface to the poems composed there, describing the beauty of the hills and water around the pavilion and the happiness of the gathering, and then the sense that good times do not last and that life and death are not ours to arrange.
And there is Yue opera, which began around Sheng county in the Shaoxing region and spread through Zhejiang, Shanghai and Jiangsu, one of the five great forms of Chinese opera and now national intangible heritage. It took shape at the end of the Qing out of a narrative singing style, absorbing the repertoire, tunes and stagecraft of other local forms, and was then called the little song troupe. Its music is clear, soft and turning, best at expressing feeling; its tunes fall into three main families and its roles into six.
The Lan Ting international calligraphy festival has run since 1985 and includes the rite of purification, the curved-water ceremony, calligraphy exhibitions, exchange auctions and an international symposium on calligraphy and tourism — held at Lan Ting in the lunar third to fourth month. The public sacrifice to Dayu is held on Kuaiji Mountain at Qingming: the first one since 1949 took place at the Yu temple in 1995, and every year since, each one larger than the last, because for millennia the Yu mausoleum has been, like the Yellow Emperor's tomb, a marker in the minds of the Chinese people.
Between the two of them you have the whole of Shaoxing in one sentence: the place where the country's writing was made, and the place where its floods were stopped.
The questions visitors ask us most about Shaoxing, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Yes, and the free ticket is generous — it covers the Lu Xun memorial museum, the ancestral home, the house itself with Baicao Garden, the Shaoxing folk-customs exhibition, the Zhu family gatehouse and Sanwei Study. You need ID to collect it: tickets are issued 08:20–16:00 for an 08:20–17:00 visit. Online reservations through the memorial museum or the Shaoxing tourism site are capped at 2,000 a day. A guide costs extra if you want one.
Hired whole, three seats to a boat including a baby in arms, four on the larger presentation boats. From Lu Xun's home: ¥50 east to Shen Garden, ¥50 west to Xianheng. City Square: ¥100 north line A, ¥80 north B, ¥100 south A, ¥60 south B, ¥180 presentation boat. East Lake ¥85 line A, ¥75 line B, about 20 minutes. Baziqiao ¥60 south, ¥80 north. Dayu's mausoleum ¥50 either line, with a sculled boat at ¥10 a head. Operations are contracted out and fares drift up, so ask at the pier. Sit in the middle and do not stand.
No. A free bus linking Lu Xun's home, Kuaiji Mountain and Lan Ting ran over Spring Festival 2012 and has since been withdrawn. Ordinary buses still connect everything for ¥1–2, and two sightseeing bus lines leave the railway station: the east line to Houshan via Zhou Enlai's ancestral home and East Lake, and the west line to Lan Ting via Zhou Enlai's home, the Lu Xun memorial, Tashan and Qiu Jin's former home.
Fennel beans first — Kong Yiji's snack, cheap, salty, built to go with wine. Then drunken chicken, poached and steeped in huadiao; pork belly with dried mustard greens, dark and salty and falling apart; and stinky tofu, fermented in amaranth-stem brine, fried or steamed. Finish with cream xiaopan, a local thing like a small tart with a meringue cap. Shaoxing cooking is savoury rather than sweet, built on river fish, poultry and beans, aiming for crisp-outside-soft-inside textures and its own stock, light on oil and no chilli.
Train is easiest — about 37 departures a day, 28 minutes on a fast train to two hours on a slow one. Coaches from Hangzhou East station are ¥20 ordinary, which lets you break the journey at Keyan, or ¥24 on the express that runs straight to the central station. Driving is the Hangzhou ring road onto the Hangyong expressway and off at the Shaoxing exit, about 1 hour 20 minutes; 180 km and 2–2.5 hours from Shanghai, about 4 hours from Nanjing. From Hangzhou Xiaoshan airport the bus is ¥30 and takes 40–50 minutes.
April to June and September to November. April to June is high water, when the canals look their best and the Lan Ting international calligraphy festival and the Houshan peach blossom festival both run. September to November has the heat receding, and carries the yellow-wine festival and the Hutang osmanthus festival. The city works year-round — four clear seasons, an annual mean of 16.5°C — but summer wants sunscreen, a fan and insect repellent.
It is possible and the source guide writes the route out: Lu Xun's residence, Shen Garden, East Lake, Lan Ting. You will be moving fast. Two days is the right shape — one for the literary axis of Lu Xun's home, Shen Garden and Cangqiao Straight Street, one for Dayu's mausoleum, Lan Ting and East Lake. Three days lets you add the ¥115 Keyan–Jianhu–Luzhen combined ticket or the Wuxie waterfalls out in Zhuji.
On or near Lu Xun Middle Road, in the centre — it puts the transport, the food and most of the sights within walking distance. Budget beds run ¥34–39 at the two youth hostels, one of them inside the Lu Xun quarter itself in a restored Song family gatehouse; mid-range is ¥254 at Harbour Hotel; the two grand names are Shaoxing Hotel at ¥359 and Xianheng Grand Hotel at ¥528.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
City guides
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Wuhan
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Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
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China's 'most beautiful countryside' — dozens of white-walled Huizhou villages strung along streams and terraced into the hills, and two weeks a year of gold.
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The South Great Peak: a pilgrimage mountain of 72 summits where the temples run all the way to the top, and the sunrise over the cloud sea is the whole point.
Huangshan
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Yellow Mountain: 82 granite peaks of twisted pines and grotesque rock, a sea of cloud that changes by the hour, and hot springs at the foot.
Wudang Mountain
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The Taoist first mountain of China — a gilded bronze hall on a 1,612 m summit, temples hung off cliff faces, and the birthplace of tai chi.
Luoyang
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Thirteen dynasties, 100,000 Buddhas carved into a river cliff, China's first Buddhist temple — and a whole city that turns peony-pink every April.
Yuntai Mountain
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Rizhao
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Yantai
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Lianyungang
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A working Jiangsu port with a myth in the middle of it — the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, a sea causeway to a big island beach, and some of the cheapest seafood on the coast.
Sanqing Mountain
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A vertical forest of granite pillars in Jiangxi — the Python Out of the Mountain, the Goddess of the East Sea, two cable cars and a cliff-hugging walkway at 1,660 metres.
Tianjin
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Datong
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A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
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Pingyao
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China's best-preserved ancient walled town — a Ming wall, the first Chinese bank, and two temples of painted clay just outside the gates.
Wutai Mountain
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China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
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The Forbidden City
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Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
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China's only true winter-sun coast — four very different bays, a coral island and a 108 m sea Buddha, all at 18° north.
Haikou
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Hainan's capital is the island's living city — 600-year-old arcade streets, a volcanic village, and a morning-tea-to-midnight food culture.
Beihai
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24 km of fine white sand on one side, a volcanic island of coral and lava on the other — plus a 19th-century arcade old street in between.
Nanning
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Guangxi
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One autonomous region, a dozen landscapes — limestone peaks and rice terraces in the north, a Vietnam border and a warm gulf coast in the south.
Huizhou
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A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
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Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
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The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Baiyangdian
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The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Qinhuangdao
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126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
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Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Zhuhai
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Wuyi Mountain
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Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
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108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
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Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
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A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
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Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
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Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
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Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
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The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
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Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
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1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
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A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
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1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
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One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
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China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
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32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
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Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
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Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
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Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
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Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
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Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
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A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
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Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
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A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
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A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
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Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
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A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
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Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
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A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
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A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
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A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
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A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
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A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
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The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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Tea in China is not a beverage category, it is a social technology: it fills silences, seals deals and sets the pace of a meal. Here is how to sit down in one and not look lost.
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Traditions
Chinese Festivals: The Calendar, the Dates and the Crowds
Lunar dates mean the calendar moves every year — and two of the festivals move several hundred million people at once. Plan around them or plan into them, but never by accident.
8 min read
Etiquette
Chinese Etiquette: What Matters, What Does Not, and Why
Most etiquette advice for China is either obvious or wrong. These are the dozen behaviours that actually change how you are treated, and the reasoning behind each.
7 min read
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