5 Days in Huzhou

Small Lotus Villa dates from 1885 and the Jiaye Library from 1924; both anchor the canal quarter where the salt-and-silk fortunes lived. Overnight in town.

1. huzhou nanxun old town
2. huzhou xiaolianzhuang garden

The hill in Deqing tops out at 724 meters under some 200 early-20th-century villas; walk the streams between them, and find the sword pool at the falls before the afternoon mist.

1. huzhou moganshan

The wetland lake south of Deqing keeps boardwalks through reeds and a crested-ibis station; then the small canal town of Xinshi, whose old market streets run 10 minutes off the lake road.

1. huzhou xiazhu lake
2. huzhou xinshi old town

Anji plants bamboo across roughly 1,000,000 mu of county; the great bamboo sea in its hills doubled as a sword-fight forest on film, and the canopy paths stay cool even in July.

1. huzhou anji bamboo sea

The pagoda-within-a-pagoda in town stacks a Tang stone core under a Song-era wooden shell; close the loop on the Taihu shore by the ring-shaped Moon Hotel and ride out from Huzhou station.

1. huzhou feiying pagoda
2. huzhou taihu lakeshore