City guide · Jiangsu
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Yangzhou is absolutely the right place to take a holiday — the spring light is bright without being harsh, the birds and flowers are there without the noise, and the food is delicate without being overwhelming.
A traveller's note, 'Ten Thousand Strings of Cash, Riding a Crane Down to Yangzhou'
Yangzhou is not big, but it is precise. So many little private courtyards have been made into something else entirely by their owners — 150 square metres, eighty of house and seventy of garden, rockery, corridor, pavilion, running water, and none of it crowded.
A traveller's note, 'Meeting Yangzhou in the Third Month'
Yangzhou has been famous for so long that the fame is part of the fabric. Every Chinese traveller knows the line about going down to Yangzhou in the third month, when the blossom is like smoke; the emperors came, the poets came, and the salt merchants who paid for it all built gardens so they would have somewhere to receive them.
It sits on the north bank of the Yangtze where the Grand Canal crosses it, and that intersection is the whole story. For most of two thousand years the canal was the empire's north–south arterial and the salt administration sat here, so the city was rich in a way that left physical evidence: at its peak there were more than 200 private gardens inside the walls, and the eighteenth-century verdict was that Hangzhou wins on lake and hills, Suzhou on its markets, and Yangzhou on its gardens.
What survives is smaller and quieter than that, which is exactly why it is pleasant to visit. Slender West Lake is a narrow ribbon of water threaded with bridges and pavilions; Ge Garden and He Garden are the two great survivors of the salt era, one famous for rockery and the other for a 1,500-metre double corridor; and the old town around Dongguan Street is a grid of lanes, workshops and food stalls that people still live in.
It is also one of the easiest cities in China to eat well in. Huaiyang cooking — one of the country's four great schools — was refined here by merchants with the money to be fussy, and it shows in the knife work, the gentle seasoning and a breakfast culture of teahouses that open at dawn and have finished by ten.
Yangzhou
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Of the thirty-six West Lakes in China, Yangzhou's is the one named for being slimmer — a ribbon of water that opens and closes as it goes, willows trailing into it, and the Five-Pavilion Bridge sitting across it like a sash. The bridge engineer Mao Yisheng called it the most artistically beautiful bridge in the country.
Ge Garden's Four Seasons rockery is the single most original thing in Chinese garden design: spring in bamboo shoots and stone, summer in grey Taihu limestone, autumn in Anhui yellow stone, winter in quartz-flecked Xuan stone that glitters in the light and looks like leftover snow. You walk through a year in about ninety minutes.
He Garden, built by a man who had served as Qing envoy to France, is called the finest garden of the late Qing. Its signature is a two-level corridor running 1,500 metres — split and rejoined, rising and falling, threading rockery and water and going straight into the living quarters, so you can walk the whole garden on two levels in any weather.
The city wakes in its teahouses. Locals call it skin wrapped around water in the morning — tea, dumplings and noodles from dawn — and water wrapped around skin at night, meaning the bathhouse. Fuchun started in 1885 as a flower nursery; Yechun sits in a little garden by the water. Both finish earlier than visitors believe.
One of China's four great cuisines, roughly 1,600 years old, and this is its home kitchen. It is a cuisine of knife work and restraint: tofu sliced into threads like hair, dried tofu shredded and simmered in chicken stock, crab roe worked into lion's head meatballs, and a fried rice with eight named ingredients.
The old east quarter holds more than a hundred alleys — Shaoyao Lane, Qionghua Temple, Wenhua Li, Wufu Lane — alongside intact courtyard houses and the sites of the old grain, oil, rice, fish and produce trades. It is free, it is lived in, and it is where the snacks are.
Suggested routes
What the local guide prints for a day trip: teahouse, lake, temple, one garden.
Start at Yechun garden — a small park with a teahouse inside it, so you eat in the garden rather than next to it. Give it an hour, then walk 260 metres to Slender West Lake.
Allow three hours on the lake, and do it by boat; the painted boats are the whole point. Come out of the north gate and you are at Daming Temple — grounds, the Jianzhen memorial hall and the pagoda you can climb for the whole city. Finish at Ge Garden, about 5 km away, 20 minutes by bus.
Stops: Yechun gardenSlender West LakeDaming TempleGe Garden
The route most visitors actually run, and the one that leaves room for the old town.
Morning tea at Yechun first — you will not get it after ten. Then walk to Slender West Lake and take a boat through the whole length of it: the causeway, the Five-Pavilion Bridge, the White Tower, the Fishing Terrace where the one spot requires you to double back.
Out of the north gate into Daming Temple for about an hour, then across town to He Garden for the double corridor and the 60-metre rockery built flat against a wall. Dinner near Wenchang Pavilion, then a walk on the canal.
Stops: YechunSlender West LakeDaming TempleHe GardenAncient canal
Ge Garden in the morning, about ninety minutes, and read the rockery in order — spring, summer, autumn, winter. Leave by the north gate and take your ticket to the Yangzhou folk-collection museum on Yanfu Road, inside Zhunti Temple, which is free with it.
Then lose the afternoon in the Dongguan Street and Dongquanmen quarter: a hundred lanes, courtyard houses, and snacks every few metres. Eat dinner here rather than going back to your hotel.
Stops: Ge GardenFolk-collection museumDongguan StreetDongquanmen
Adds the Han tombs and the Tang city site, and one afternoon doing nothing in particular.
Morning tea, Slender West Lake by boat, Daming Temple, He Garden. The four are close enough to do in daylight if you start early.
Stops: Slender West LakeDaming TempleHe Garden
Ge Garden, the folk-collection museum, then the Dongguan Street quarter and the canal at dusk.
Stops: Ge GardenDongguan StreetAncient canal
Hanlingyuan on Pingshantang East Road — the tomb of the first Western Han king of Guangling, built in the huangchang ticou style, the largest and most complex of its kind found anywhere in China. Then the Tang city site next door, with its 148-metre Tang-style bridge and the memorial hall to the Korean scholar Cui Zhiyuan.
Finish the afternoon the local way: a teahouse, then a foot treatment. Luqin and Suyang are the two household names in the city's footcare trade.
Stops: HanlingyuanTang city siteA bathhouse
Sights
The lake, in one ribbon
A narrow winding stretch of water that opens and closes as it goes, named by an eighteenth-century poet who decided it deserved the name West Lake but a thinner one. Inside are the Five-Pavilion Bridge, the White Tower the salt merchants are said to have thrown up overnight, the Fishing Terrace where Qianlong supposedly fished, and the Four Bridges in Mist pavilion, the widest view in the park.
Tip Give it three hours and take a boat rather than walking the whole bank. The Fishing Terrace is the only spot in the park where you have to double back, so plan for it. Autumn evenings bring the night opening, when fifteen arches of the Five-Pavilion Bridge each hold a moon.
Four seasons in stone
Built by Huang Zhiyun, head of the Lianghuai salt administration, on the site of a Ming garden. Bamboo and rock are the entire vocabulary — even the name is half of the character for bamboo. The Four Seasons rockery is a unique survival: spring in bamboo shoots, summer in grey Taihu limestone over a three-fold bridge, autumn in Anhui yellow stone cut like axe work, winter in Xuan stone whose quartz flecks catch the light like snow.
Tip Read the rockery in order — spring, summer, autumn, winter — or the whole point is lost. Then leave by the north gate and use your ticket on the folk-collection museum on Yanfu Road, inside Zhunti Temple.
The last great Qing garden
Built by He Zhidao, who had served as the Qing government's envoy to France, on the site of an earlier Qianlong-era garden. It is called the finest garden of the late Qing, and nearly a hundred films and television series have shot here. The signature is the 1,500-metre double-decked corridor, and the second wonder is the 60-metre wall rockery built flat against a boundary wall to hide the fact that there was a wall at all.
Tip Go when it rains if you can — the two-level corridor exists precisely so you can walk the whole garden under cover, and almost nobody else will be there. Look for the mirror in the west corridor that takes in the whole garden, and the pool beside it that shows the moon waxing and waning as you move.
Jianzhen, and the qionghua
Founded in the Southern Dynasties on a ridge north-west of the lake, combining a working monastery, antiquities and garden. It holds the memorial hall to the monk Jianzhen, who crossed to Japan and never came back, the Ouyang Xiu shrine and the Gulin hall Su Dongpo built. Climb the Qiling pagoda for the whole city.
Tip The north gate of Slender West Lake puts you straight into the temple, so do them in one movement rather than two journeys. Guanyin Hill next door costs ¥10 and is the highest natural point in the city.
The old town, free
The historic core, once laid with stone slabs and lined with nearly a hundred trades — grain, oil and rice, fresh fish, the eight fresh produce lines, melons and fruit, bamboo and timber. More than a hundred lanes run off it with names like Shaoyao Lane and Qionghua Temple, and courtyard houses of the brass-lock, one-seal and great-gate types survive intact.
Tip This is where you eat. Come hungry and graze rather than sitting down for one big meal — the street is designed for it, and the side lanes are quieter than the main drag.
The oldest stretch
The Yangzhou section is the oldest surviving stretch of the Grand Canal, and a history of the canal here is very nearly a history of the city. The water is clear, it runs straight through town, and the banks are lined with monuments. The walking route runs from Bianyimen Square pier to the Kangshan culture park pier.
Tip Walk it after dinner. The stretch of riverside park has small squares every so often with symbols cut into the paving — you will not read them in the dark, but the walk is the best free evening in the city.
A Han royal tomb
The museum of the Han king of Guangling, holding the wooden-chamber tombs of Liu Xu, first Western Han king of Guangling, and his queen. Both are imperial-grade huangchang ticou burials, and in scale, complexity and finish this is the finest of its kind found anywhere in China. The underground palace hall is 64.4 metres north to south and reproduces the excavation as it was found.
Tip Pair it with the Tang city site and Guanyin Hill, which are on the same road. Most visitors skip it and most visitors are wrong — the timberwork is the most impressive single object in Yangzhou.
Park, zoo and riverbank
Named for the dogwood supposedly planted here in the Han dynasty to ward off evil, and made famous by the Tang poets who wrote about it. It is now a riverside park with a lotus bridge modelled on tree stumps, a waterfowl lake with swans and mandarin ducks, a monkey island built on the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, and a big-cats enclosure.
Tip Half a day, and the right half-day if you are travelling with children or have had enough of gardens. Go in summer when the lotus is out.
A salt merchant's house
The best-preserved late-Qing and early-Republican salt-merchant residence in the city, at 14 Diguan Lane. Three parallel rows of houses, three bays deep on a single axis, side wings perfectly symmetrical — Confucian balance made architecture. Rooms are built in odd-numbered combinations because odd numbers are yang.
Tip It is inside the Dongguan Street quarter, so do it as part of the old-town afternoon rather than as a separate trip. Zhu Ziqing's former home on Anle Lane is a ten-minute walk and costs ¥10.
Painters who misbehaved
A museum devoted to the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, housed in a Ming nanmu hall that was once the Western Temple, with a reconstructed lodging for the painter Jin Nong. The Crane Pool outside takes its name from his line about a crane watching ice, and there is a thousand-year-old ginkgo beside it.
Tip An hour, and a good hour if the gardens have started to blur together. The Wu Daotai mansion on Taizhou Road and the Tang city site are both short bus rides away if you want to keep going.
Food
The dish everybody thinks they know, done properly: separate grains, eight named ingredients, egg coating each grain. The local versions run from plain egg to golden-wrapped-silver, shrimp, ham and the full assorted. Eat it somewhere that does nothing else and you will see the difference.
The dish that defines Huaiyang knife work — dried tofu sliced into even sheets and then into threads, simmered with chicken, ham and bamboo in chicken stock, finished with shrimp and pea shoots. Mild, and entirely about texture and stock.
Created by the monk Wensi at Tianning Temple in the Qianlong era: soft tofu cut into threads as fine as hair, with ham, in a clear broth. The cutting is the dish. Watch someone order it and then watch them try to pick it up.
Pork and crab meat hand-chopped into great soft meatballs, braised without dark soy so they stay pale, served in a casserole under a leaf of greens. Done right it comes apart with a spoon. Add crab roe and it is the upper version.
Yangzhou's three signature big-plate dishes: the whole braised pig's head, four or five hundred years old as a recipe and glossy dark red; the crab-roe lion's head; and the deboned silver carp head, split, boned and braised with spring onion and ginger in rich stock.
The teahouse standard: diced chicken from a bird at least a year old, pork belly with the right balance of fat, and fresh bamboo cut to the season. The dough is fermented soft but with bite. At Fuchun they have kept the same starter method for over a century.
Two snacks ordered together: thousand-layer cake, sixty-four layers of dough and sugar fat, translucent and amber-coloured, and jade shaomai, whose green filling is made from Meiling greens with sugar and lard, shaped like a pomegranate with a ham dot on top. Both were created at Fuchun.
Firm, savoury and clean-tasting, sold from street carts all over the city. Locals point to the stall nicknamed eat-and-not-forget on Wangyue Road. Buy it sliced to take away with beer rather than sitting down for it.
Two hundred years old as a Yangzhou speciality, famous along the whole Shanghai–Nanjing line: thin skin, plenty of soup, full filling, made with crab oil and pork. Eat them with Zhenjiang vinegar and shredded ginger, which is what the ginger is for.
A set banquet built around the painters — cold plates, main courses, small pastries and fruit, arranged so the food echoes the paintings. Worth ordering once if you are in a group and want to see the cuisine's full range in one sitting.
Where to eat
The oldest name
Founded in 1885 as a flower nursery and grown into a teahouse, Fuchun is the orthodox house of Huaiyang dim sum. Big, bright, old-fashioned rooms, and the queue is part of the experience. Creator of both halves of the two marvels of Yangzhou.
Tea in a garden
The other old name, inside Yechun garden where the water is, and the natural place to start the classic day because it is 260 metres from Slender West Lake. Dumplings are as good as they look, which is not always true of pretty dim sum.
Where locals are taken
A local banquet house that does Huaiyang properly. The crab-roe lion's head is the dish to judge it by — fat and lean properly balanced, fragrant rather than greasy, breaking up in the mouth. The fried rice turns up on nearly every table with exactly eight ingredients.
One dish, done right
A small place that does the city's signature dish and little else: grains separate, golden, and cheap enough that it is full of people who actually live here. If you want to understand what the fried rice is supposed to be, this is where to do it.
Noodles and wontons, local prices
An old name that locals choose over the ones visitors are sent to, largely because the value is better. The shrimp roe is plump and the broth is the thing — order shrimp-roe wontons, dumpling noodles and a pan-fried dumpling or two.
The old-town snack stop
An old shop on Dongguan Street with a queue out the door and no easy seating. Sesame cakes, tofu pudding, dumpling noodles, wontons and the flat shoe-sole pastry — the whole range of Yangzhou street snacks at street prices.
Where to stay
The central base
Wenchang Road is the busiest shopping street in the city, and Wenhe Road crosses it at Wenchang Pavilion. Siwangting Road, one stop north, is Yangzhou's best-known eating street. Chain hotels start around ¥150; the cheap lodgings cluster around the coach stations, further from the sights.
On the lake
Sits quietly on the bank of Slender West Lake at the crossing of Youyi Road and Changchun Road, looking across the water at Xuyuan, the Four Bridges in Mist tower and the willow causeway. Close to the Wenchang shopping district and about 20 minutes from the railway station.
Central, mid-range
In the centre on Wenchang Middle Road, about 6 km from the railway station. Quiet, comfortable rooms, full leisure facilities and Huaiyang cooking that gets a genuine recommendation rather than a hotel-restaurant shrug.
Next to the garden
Right beside Ge Garden and the Dongguan Street historic quarter, which makes it the best-placed cheap bed in the city — you can be at morning tea, the lake bus or the old town within minutes.
Drivers and late arrivals
On the main approach road near the west coach station, with direct buses to Slender West Lake and Ge Garden and easy taxis. Not expensive, and the sensible choice if you are arriving late or driving in.
Cheapest bed in the old town
A small themed inn on Pishi Street in the old quarter, a few steps from the Plum Blossom Academy, Zhu Ziqing's former home and the old church site. Dorm beds are the cheapest in the guide, and you are sleeping inside the lanes.
Getting around
Yangzhou Taizhou International (YTY) is jointly built by the two cities and sits about 30 km from central Yangzhou. The airport bus leaves from 1 Fengleshang Street, by the south side of the Friendship Hall, with first departures at 07:30 on Mon/Wed/Fri/Sun and 08:30 on Tue/Thu/Sat, plus 14:00, 16:00 and 19:40; the fare is about ¥25. There is also a direct coach to Nanjing Lukou International from 201 Wenhui East Road for around ¥66.
Yangzhou station is in Hanjiang district on Wenchang West Road, reached by buses 22 and 26. There are direct trains to Beijing, Nanchang, Xi'an and Chengdu, plus about 18 services passing through; from Nanjing there are roughly eight lines a day taking about 1 hour 20 minutes.
Coaches are often handier than the train here. The west station runs to Nanjing roughly every 15 minutes at busy times and 20–30 minutes otherwise, for ¥34, and to Suzhou in about three hours for ¥62. There are also east and north stations, with the west station handling most long-distance departures.
Flat fare ¥2, mostly self-service, and Wenchang Pavilion downtown is the hub where the lines are densest. The tourist line is the one to know: it starts at the west coach station and runs past He Garden, the old ferry crossing, the arts and crafts museum, Ge Garden, the Shi Kefa memorial, Slender West Lake, Guanyin Hill, Daming Temple and the Jianzhen library.
Flagfall ¥7 for 3 km, then ¥2.4 per km, plus ¥1 fuel surcharge; at night, 11pm to 6am, the flagfall goes to ¥8 with the same per-km rate. The city is small, so almost anywhere inside it costs under ¥10.
In the old east quarter the lanes are too narrow for anything much — the whole area around Guoqing Road, especially — so the pedicabs earn their living. Flagfall ¥4 plus ¥1 a kilometre, but there is no meter and no way to check the distance: agree the price before you get in, every time.
There is a car ferry between Guazhou and Zhenjiang that also carries foot passengers; crossing the Yangtze that way is slower than the Runyang bridge and much more fun. Drivers from Shanghai take the Shanghai–Nanjing expressway onto the Yangzhou–Liyang expressway; note that it splits into a Yangzhou North exit, closest to Slender West Lake, and a Yangzhou West exit, closest to Jinghuacheng.
Shopping
Listed as palace table condiments in the Qing and winners of medals at international expositions. Before 1949 the city had over a hundred pickle shops, each with its own trick, and Sanhe and Simei were the best of them. Sold everywhere, cheap, and it travels.
Yangzhou's famous three: the kitchen knife, the pedicure knife and the barber's knife — crafts the city turned into an art form. Shops selling them line Guoqing South Road by the Fuchun Teahouse door, and there are plenty on Dongguan Street too.
Called one marvel of Yangzhou: chewy, sweet, rolled in sesame, brown and translucent when cut, elastic under the tooth and — the selling point — it does not stick to your fillings.
The old cosmetics house, whose products divide into scent, powder and oil, with the egg-shaped duck-egg powder the signature. Made by the traditional method of scenting with fresh flowers and fixing with musk, chosen as tribute powder by the Qing court. The saying was that no perfume in the world beats Yangzhou's.
One of the earliest centres of Chinese paper cutting — by the Tang and Song the custom of cutting paper to greet spring was already established, and on the day spring begins people cut flowers, butterflies and ornaments to hang in the hair or under the blossom.
Also called zhengze embroidery, worked in crossing lines of uneven length with colour laid in layers, and now counted among China's five great embroidery styles. It suits oil paintings, photographs and drawings better than any other Chinese stitch, and Baoying is the place it is done best.
Silk flowers worn as ornaments, in the palace by the Tang dynasty. Yangzhou is one of the places the craft began. Small, fine, vivid, and cheap — the local comparison is to the girl next door of the handicraft world: pretty without being flashy.
Wenchang Road is the busiest shopping street, with Golden Eagle and Parkson at the Wenchang Pavilion crossing; Siwangting Road to the north is the food street. For a one-stop sweep of local produce, the Yangzhou Sanhe speciality store at 30 Youyi Road by the lake carries the full range at fair prices.
Practical
The single most common mistake visitors make is arriving at a teahouse at eleven. Morning tea is over by ten, and the famous items are gone.
| Best months | March–April for blossom and the tourism festival; September–October for the moon festival. Average annual temperature 14.8°C; winter runs over four months, summer about three, spring and autumn about two each. |
|---|---|
| Key tickets | Slender West Lake ¥150 / ¥120; Ge Garden ¥45 / ¥30; He Garden ¥45 / ¥30; Daming Temple ¥45 / ¥30; Hanlingyuan ¥30; Eight Eccentrics hall ¥25; Wang Family Small Garden ¥35 / ¥25; Zhuyuwan ¥45 / ¥30; Yechun garden ¥10; Guanyin Hill ¥10 |
| Combo ticket | ¥220 covering Slender West Lake, Ge Garden, He Garden, Daming Temple and the ancient canal — cheaper than buying them separately, so buy it first |
| Free | Dongguan Street and Dongquanmen, Wenchang Pavilion, the ancient canal, the lanes of the old town, and the folk-collection museum on Yanfu Road with your Ge Garden ticket |
| Tourism festival | 18 April–18 May, when the rare qionghua is in flower: culture and shopping programmes, a bathing festival, fireworks and night openings on Slender West Lake |
| Moon festival | 8 September–8 October. On Mid-Autumn night the fifteen arches of the Five-Pavilion Bridge each hold a moon; the Moon-Viewing hall is the other place to be |
| Getting around | Bus ¥2 flat; taxi ¥7 for 3 km then ¥2.4 per km plus ¥1 fuel; pedicab ¥4 plus ¥1 a km, agreed in advance; airport bus about ¥25 |
| Useful numbers | Tourism hotline and complaints 12301; Yangzhou tourism bureau 0514-87340828; railway enquiries 0514-85546222; airport 0514-86100323; tourism distribution centre 0514-85105888 |
| Hospitals | Yangzhou No.1 People's Hospital, 45 Taizhou Road, 0514-87907373; Subei People's Hospital of Jiangsu, 98 Nantong West Road, 0514-87937541; Yangzhou Hospital of TCM, 575 Wenchang Middle Road, 0514-87937133 |
Tips
Morning tea finishes around 10am, and the state-run teahouses are barely operating after 1pm. Lunch and dinner service still exists, but the famous pastries will not. If you only do one Yangzhou thing properly, do this one.
¥220 covers the lake, both gardens, Daming Temple and the canal. Since the lake alone is ¥150 in season, the combo saves real money — but you have to buy it before you start paying at individual gates.
Come out of Ge Garden's north gate and walk to the folk-collection museum on Yanfu Road, inside Zhunti Temple — free with your Ge Garden ticket. Holdings change constantly because private collectors bring things in, so it is never the same twice.
The lake is a ribbon, and the composition of it only reads from the water. Three hours with a painted boat beats three hours on the bank, and it is the reason the place has the reputation it has.
The car ferry from Guazhou to Zhenjiang takes foot passengers and is much slower than the Runyang bridge. Take it anyway once — crossing the Yangtze on a ferry is a better memory than crossing it on a bridge.
The pedicure knife is one of the city's three, and it is not a tourist novelty. Luqin and Suyang are the two household names, both run by national model workers, with branches across the city. An hour of it costs less than a museum ticket.
Background
Yangzhou sits in the middle of Jiangsu on the north bank of the lower Yangtze, and has been called the gateway to northern Jiangsu since antiquity. It was already a walled city in 486 BC, when it was known as Yangzhou in the sense of a province rather than a town; the name first appears in the Tribute of Yu section of the Book of Documents. The climate is humid subtropical with monsoon-driven winds: dry cold northerlies in a winter that runs more than four months, hot wet southeasterlies in a summer of about three, and short spring and autumn of roughly two months each. The annual mean is 14.8°C.
The city's early prosperity came from being one of China's first centres of foreign trade and contact. In the Tang it was described as crowded with merchants and the richest place under heaven, with more than 5,000 Yangzhou merchants living overseas and a port on the maritime silk road. The poets did the rest: ten years in Yangzhou was a dream, ten li of spring wind on Yangzhou road, and the twenty-four bridges under a bright moon.
Until the nineteenth century Yangzhou was the state-regulated exchange centre for salt, rice and silk. Because the salt merchants were the richest men in China, they had the money to build on a scale nobody else could, and at the height of it there were more than 200 private gardens inside the city walls. The eighteenth-century line in Li Dou's record of the city is the one that still stings in Suzhou: Hangzhou wins on lake and hills, Suzhou on its markets, Yangzhou on its gardens — and it was Yangzhou's gardens that were called the finest under heaven first, not Suzhou's.
Then it went. Reform of the salt monopoly, the Opium War and the Taiping rising between 1853 and 1949 wrecked, burned or sold off most of what had been built, and the railways finished the job. The Grand Canal, which had carried the city for two thousand years, lost its traffic, and the line that was eventually planned did not treat connecting Yangzhou as important. The city that had been an economic centre of China slid into being an ordinary one. Parts of the canal have since reopened to traffic and Yangzhou is a trading centre again, exporting cotton and textiles among other things; the railway to Nanjing only opened in 2004.
What is left is a smaller, quieter version, and Ge Garden is the best of it — the oldest, most complete and most artistically valuable garden in the city. Huaiyang cooking is the other survival, and it is not a lesser one: the cuisine is counted with Shandong, Sichuan and Guangdong as one of China's four great schools, known for precision with a knife, especially in melon carving, for exact heat control, and for dishes that look delicate and taste mild.
Yangzhou qingqu is one of Jiangsu's oldest and most influential forms of sung narrative, at its height in the Kangxi and Qianlong eras and spread from there across much of China. Most of its music grew out of local tunes, and the lyrics take their subjects from everywhere. Singers divide into broad and narrow voices, both working on the principle that the melody follows the word, with attention to phrasing and production; a piece is sung by one to several people, everyone else playing an instrument, in a seated form that has not changed. It went onto the first national intangible heritage list in 2006.
The Eight Eccentrics were the painters who made the city's reputation in the eighteenth century, and the memorial hall in the old Western Temple keeps their work alongside the rooms where Jin Nong lived and painted. Jin Nong kept cranes, wrote that he was often hungry and the crane short of grain, and cut a line into a wall one snowy day: at such a moment what does one think of — the crane on the pool watching the ice.
And then there is the bathing culture, which visitors find odd and locals find obvious. The phrase is skin wrapping water in the morning, water wrapping skin at night: the teahouse at dawn, the bathhouse after dark. The three knives of the city are the kitchen knife, the pedicure knife and the barber's knife, and they are treated as one craft tradition rather than three service jobs.
Travel with them
Directed by Zeng Xiaoxin; written by Zhou Haohui
A romance set in Yangzhou in the third lunar month, built around the cooking trade: the hundred-year-old Yanyu Tower is preparing for the annual gathering of the city's kitchens, at which the head chefs of Yangzhou's three greatest restaurants cook against each other for the title first tower under heaven. Ninety-three minutes, and it will make you want to book a table.
Li Dou (Qing dynasty)
Written over thirty years from what the author saw and heard while living in the city, and it covers nearly everything: the city's wards, the changing course of the canal, crafts, commerce, gardens and monuments, customs, opera, and anecdotes about the literati. It is the source of the line about Hangzhou, Suzhou and Yangzhou, and it is still the book to read about the place.
Su Aigen
Eighty-odd essays written in spare time after the author moved to Beijing in 2008, most of them about Yangzhou. It is a resident's book rather than a visitor's, and it is good on the parts of the city that do not appear in guidebooks.
Traditional, still performed seated
The local sung-narrative tradition, on the first national intangible heritage list since 2006. Performers sit, everyone plays something, and the melody follows the words. If you see a notice for a performance while you are in town, go — it is the oldest thing in the city you can still hear.
The questions visitors ask us most about Yangzhou, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Two is right and two is pleasant. Day one is the classic run — morning tea at Yechun, Slender West Lake by boat, out of the north gate into Daming Temple, then He Garden for the corridors. Day two is Ge Garden, the folk-collection museum you get free with your Ge Garden ticket, and the lanes of Dongguan Street. A third day buys the Han tombs, the Tang city site, or an afternoon of teahouses and a foot bath.
Earlier than you expect — it is a dawn-to-10am institution, and the famous items are gone by ten. The state-run teahouses stop doing much after 1pm. Be sitting down at Fuchun on Deshengqiao Street or Yechun in its garden on Fengle Xiajie by eight, order three-diced buns, crab-roe soup dumplings and dry-braised shredded tofu, and drink the house tea.
Yes, if you are doing the lake and both gardens, which you should be. Slender West Lake alone is ¥150 in season, Ge Garden and He Garden are ¥45 each and Daming Temple ¥45, so the combo covering all four plus the ancient canal saves a meaningful amount. Buy it at the first sight you reach.
Yes — they are not the same thing. Suzhou's gardens are the classical ideal, refined over centuries. Yangzhou's were built by salt merchants with more money than restraint, mixing imperial scale with Jiangnan detail, and it was Yangzhou's gardens that were called the finest under heaven first. Ge Garden's four-season rockery is a one-off.
Huaiyang food, which is gentle, precise and not spicy. Yangzhou fried rice done properly, crab-roe lion's head, dry-braised shredded tofu, Wensi tofu soup cut into threads, salted goose, and the three heads — the whole braised pig's head, the crab-roe lion's head and the deboned silver carp head. For snacks, the thousand-layer cake and jade shaomai known as the two marvels of Yangzhou.
From Nanjing it is easy either way — about eight trains a day taking roughly 1 hour 20 minutes, or coaches from the west station every 15–30 minutes for ¥34. From Shanghai the train takes a long time; the usual advice is to go to Zhenjiang first and change to a coach, or to take the expressway route by car over the Runyang bridge.
The historic core: Dongguan Street and Dongquanmen, with more than a hundred lanes between them, Wenchang Pavilion at the crossing of Wenhe Road and Wenchang Middle Road, and the whole ancient canal bank from Bianyimen Square pier to the Kangshan culture park pier. Walking the old town costs nothing and is the best half-day in the city.
It has a different mood, and it is not a bad one. Mist layers over Slender West Lake in the cold months, the crowds are gone, and there are hot springs to sit in. The gardens are quieter than you will ever see them in April — just do not come expecting blossom.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
City guides
Dalian
City guide · 15 tours
The Northern Pearl — China's most romantic coastal city.
Shenyang
City guide · 12 tours
Where the Qing dynasty began — an imperial palace, a warlord's mansion and the cheapest good food in the northeast.
Changbai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano on the North Korean border, a jade-green crater lake at 2,189 m, and hot springs on the way down.
Kunming
City guide · 12 tours
China's Spring City — a mild plateau capital of flowers, markets and the Stone Forest, with gulls on the lake in winter.
Dali
City guide · 12 tours
A walled Bai town between a 4,000 m mountain and a great lake — wind, flowers, snow and moon, and life at a slower speed.
Shuhe
City guide · 12 tours
The quiet version of Lijiang — a Tea Horse Road village of canals, stone bridges and slow afternoons, 4 km from the crowds.
Lijiang
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO Naxi old town of canals and cobbles beneath a 5,596 m snow mountain — the cultural heart of north-west Yunnan.
Xiamen
City guide · 12 tours
A subtropical island city of temples, fishing-village lanes and the best street food in Fujian — with the car-free islet of Gulangyu a 20-minute ferry away.
Gulangyu
City guide · 12 tours
A car-free island of colonial villas, pianos and cats, twenty minutes off Xiamen — and the one place where the trick is simply to stay the night.
Fuzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,200-year-old capital of banyan trees and mountains-within-the-city, where the Ming lanes of Sanfang Qixiang meet the dockyard that built China's modern navy.
Lugu Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,680 m lake on the Yunnan–Sichuan border, home to China's last matrilineal people, pig-trough canoes and a great deal of doing nothing.
Xishuangbanna
City guide · 12 tours
China's tropical south — rainforest, wild elephants, Dai villages and the Mekong, wrapped around the gateway city of Jinghong.
Shangri-La
City guide · 12 tours
A Tibetan town at 3,300 m in Yunnan's Diqing prefecture — monasteries, grassland, prayer wheels and cold thin air.
Nanchang
City guide · 12 tours
Jiangxi's 'hero city' on the Gan River — one great Tang pavilion, a 160-metre Ferris wheel, and the best claypot soup you will eat in China.
Hefei
City guide · 12 tours
Anhui's 2,000-year-old capital: the hometown of China's model judge, a moat-turned-garden ring, and the fast rail gateway to Huangshan.
Hongcun
City guide · 12 tours
A 900-year-old Hui village laid out as an ox, with water running to every door and a mirror-still crescent pond at its heart.
Wuhan
City guide · 12 tours
Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
City guide · 12 tours
Hunan's loud, young capital: a 3,000-year-old city that eats chilli-hot food, stays up all night and treats foot massage as a civic duty.
Fenghuang Ancient Town
City guide · 12 tours
The stilt-house river town of Shen Congwen's 'Border Town' — glowing lanterns, stepping stones and the best two nights in western Hunan.
Lushan
City guide · 12 tours
A cloud-wrapped granite mountain with a Victorian hill station on top, waterfalls in three tiers, and the mist that Su Shi said you could never see through.
Wuyuan
City guide · 12 tours
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.
Mount Heng (Hengshan, Hunan)
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO geopark in Henan where red-stone gorges squeeze a river to a slot, a 314 m waterfall drops in one plunge, and every path leads to another pool.
Rizhao
City guide · 12 tours
A low-key Shandong beach town where the sun rises straight out of the Yellow Sea, the sand runs 60 km and a seafood dinner costs less than a coffee in Shanghai.
Yantai
City guide · 12 tours
A northern Shandong port of fairy-tale cliffs, wine cellars and long golden beaches — where emperors once hunted the elixir of life and China's wine industry still begins.
Lianyungang
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's port city next door — a river of 24 bridges, 2,000 colonial villas, and the best street breakfast in northern China.
Datong
City guide · 12 tours
A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
City guide · 12 tours
Shanxi's provincial capital and noodle heartland — the spring of Jinci, two Ming pagodas, and a museum that explains the whole province.
Pingyao
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
City guide · 12 tours
China's finest grassland — a 263,000 km² sweep of steppe, birch forest and border river, best driven with the windows down.
The Forbidden City
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
Sanya
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
Guangxi's green capital is a gateway to Detian Falls, Beihai and Vietnam — and a genuinely excellent food city if you let it slow you down.
Guangxi
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
City guide · 12 tours
Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
City guide · 12 tours
The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Baiyangdian
City guide · 12 tours
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Qinhuangdao
City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
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.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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
City guide · 12 tours
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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