Where to Stay in Huzhou, Zhejiang

What is Huzhou known for?

The Lougang irrigation and drainage system in the Taihu basin still shapes the fields, the canal towns of Nanxun and Shuanglin still turn on their bridges, and Lake Tai closes the northern edge. Feiying Pagoda marks the old city. Up in the hills, the Villas in Mount Mogan draw a different kind of visitor, one after cool air rather than water.

What are the main landmarks in Huzhou?

Feiying Pagoda is the marker that stands over the old city, and the Huzhou Museum gathers what the fields and kiln sites around it have produced. Bridges do the rest of the work: Shouchang Bridge, Chaoyin Bridge and the Three Bridges in Shuanglin all still carry traffic over the canals. Zhao Mengfu tomb lies out among them.

Older ground still shows at Qianshanyang and the Liangzhu site.

What is the history of Huzhou?

The register reads as a stack of layers. Qianshanyang, the Pishan Site and the Liangzhu site record settlement on this ground long before any of the towns took their present shape, and the proto-porcelain kiln sites in Deqing show craft production established early on the same ground. Water came under management next.

The Lougang irrigation and drainage system in the Taihu basin turned marsh into field, and the pattern of dyke, pond and canal it laid down still governs how the land drains. Bridges and libraries mark the later centuries. Shouchang Bridge and Chaoyin Bridge, the Three Bridges in Shuanglin, the City wall of Anji and Dusong Pass all belong to a landscape organised around movement by water and by defensible ground.

Nanxun holds the densest concentration: Jiaye Library, the former residences of Zhang Jingjiang, Zhang Shiming and Liu Ansheng, and Nanxun Christ Church, standing together in one small canal town. Zhao Mengfu tomb lies in the countryside outside the city. Later entries include the Tomb of Chen Yingshi and the Site of Jiangsu-Zhejiang Military Region of the New Fourth Army, while the Villas in Mount Mogan record the taste for hill summers above the plain.

Where is Huzhou?

Lake Tai sets the northern boundary, and the ground below it is flat, wet and cut through with canals that drain the Taihu basin toward the lake. Jiaxing lies east, Hangzhou south, with Anhui and Jiangsu beyond the western and northern limits of the prefecture. The land tilts up at Mount Mogan. Anji sits in that upland country, well away from the water.

What is the climate of Huzhou?

Damp air off Lake Tai holds over the plain for much of the year, and the subtropical position gives Huzhou hot, close summers with rain that arrives in long spells rather than short bursts. Winters are cool and grey. Frost is uncommon on the plain, though Mount Mogan runs colder than the canal towns below and keeps its cloud longer, which is the difference travellers notice most between the two halves of the prefecture.

How do you get to Huzhou?

Hangzhou is the usual approach. Roads run north from Hangzhou onto the Huzhou plain, and the same corridor carries on around Lake Tai into Jiangsu, which is the line most traffic from that side follows. Jiaxing sits east on the plain route.

For Nanxun, Deqing or the Villas in Mount Mogan, plan the final leg separately, since the canal towns and the hill road branch away from the corridor between Hangzhou and the lake.