Nanxun, China: Little Known Water Town is an Absolute Must

​After our time in Shanghai, we decided to make a stop at a nearby water town before heading to another big city, Hangzhou. Water towns are these tiny traditional villages on canals and what nots that are supposed to provide a charming break from big cities. Nanxun, though little known, is supposed to be the most beautiful water town. It’s touristed by Chinese domestic travelers, but not very visited by Westerners. In fact, it’s not even in our 1000-page guidebook. But the few things we saw online about it tempted us to give it a shot. And thank goodness we did, because Nanxun is the most beautiful village maybe in all of China. Now I haven’t seen all of China yet, but Nanxun is special enough that I would bet on it. If you can get there, you must. I really loved everything about it.  

​You’re gonna have to take my word for it, though. Not that I don’t have pictures – oh I took more pictures of this beautiful place than anywhere else – to prove it, but just that you can’t verify it with other non-Chinese travelers you know, because I actually don’t think more than five have gone. After our time in the big cities of Beijing and Shanghai, going straight to Nanxun was a rude awakening in terms of anyone knowing English. First of all, we didn’t see a white person from the time we left the Astor House Hotel lobby in Shanghai until we got to Hangzhou, the next destination. And I don’t think anyone in Nanxun had seen a white person in a very long time. In fact, our hotel in Nanxun only had one online review in English, and it was from people who went there in April and said the staff told them they were their very first Western guests. I imagine that means we were the second. How cool is that!

When we got out of the car after the 2 1/2 hours or so drive from Shanghai (we just hired a car, it was easier than figuring out various buses can you imagine? outside cities?), we were surprised to see that the ‘hostel’ we booked on the main road, Nanxun Xunyi Jingdian Hostel, right outside the entry to the Old Town section, was a beautiful boutique hotel. They just don’t know what the word hostel means, I think, because this was a hotel if there ever was one. In fact, it was one of the most beautiful hotels I’ve seen. Everything was gorgeous, and the room was sublime. Spacious, airy, and comfortable while still looking like a traditional Chinese place, with a beautiful bathroom, giant clean lovely bed, strong air conditioning, two of the fluffiest robes you’ve ever seen in the closet, two water bottles, and room-specific wifi – can you believe it? So it was the strongest yet. And cheap enough that we assumed it was indeed a hostel, before we saw it. God I loved this place! 

​So, the staff was wonderful – and they didn’t speak a word of English. We communicated back and forth solely via Google Translate, which, if you’ve ever used it, you know is never reliable and in Chinese is often hysterically mistaken. The owner’s phone kept saying ‘daughter-in-law’ to us. “The daughter-in-law is good and the right sort of money. You will find a good daughter-in-law there it’s close to the daughter-in-law and there will be a daughter-in-law.” We just nodded. Oh and the very first thing he had his phone say to us while checking in was, “Are you traveling here?” Um……sure???? Right? Isn’t that…obvious… It was so funny but everything was sorted and great. The fact that dealing with their friendly staff solely via phone apps went 100x more smoothly than dealing with English-speaking staff at the Astor House shows what a better place this was – and for a lot less money. God I loved this place. 

Also, the info booklet in the room was amazing, and it did have English – though not very decipherable English. Yes I do want to continue to live! Tell me what to do! Also no wonder our credit card didn’t work – it was not any of those flowers or magical animals, but a regular credit card indeed. Shucks. 

​After we basked in the delight of a perfect hotel room, we meandered down the block to the Old Town entrance. So Nanxun is a regular small town with a main street and other streets, and the actual old traditional water town part is set back, preserved, and requires an entrance ticket. I was a little surprised and taken aback that the ‘town’ we came to see was ticketed, but it was only 100 yuan (like $15 maybe?) and doing this, I realized, helps preserve the beautiful area and keep it from being built up or modernized or ruined in some way. So, good idea, town. 

The sights inside the water town part – like various houses, museums, gardens – close at 5pm, and it was already after 4pm when we arrived, so we weren’t able to do that then. But a kindly guide person told us that at 5pm, when the inside sights close, the grounds are still open and free! So we spent the evening walking around and taking most of our grounds pictures of all the canals and bridges and buildings and boats and it was so flipping beautiful. It’s so lovely 

​We also got a chance to scope out the things we really wanted to prioritize when we returned for the ticketed parts the next morning. Like the Lotus Garden, which had the biggest lotuses I’ve ever seen.

It was so cool! We also went to a few of the small museums the next day, most of which were fine if not as interesting as the scenery (and not in English). In one, a family asked Z for his picture and then to take pictures with him, the whole family. They didn’t even look at me. After they did their photoshoot, I heard the woman say about Z “Beautiful”. It was weird. But, anyway, they didn’t want my picture so f them. 

​Taking a boat ride seemed like the thing to do along the canals, Venezia-style, but it was so hot and sunny that sitting still with no shade and not going fast enough for wind seemed like a bad idea. I’m glad we decided to just walk around in the splendor and peace. 

​Well, the free evening time was peaceful. The next day was PACKED with busloads of Chinese tourists. I forgot that this country was so gigantic that more than a billion Chinese people would still be tourists here. Not all of them were there that day, probably just a million. No it wasn’t that bad, really. Nothing could ruin this little visit for us. It was so perfect. 

Inside the old town, there are plenty of shops, selling all kinds of things like fruit teas, weird juices, nut brittles, and lots and lots of Chinese food (tip: it’s just called food here). There was an adorable cat themed cafe that had a real cat inside and an English menu of drinks. I had this delicious watermelon tea drink. We went there both days I think. We needed a lot of cold drinks in that heat. 

​We were lucky to get to see the old town all quiet and full of locals in the evening, and then boisterous and full of tourists the next. Also, we got to take tons of pictures in different light. Damn we took a lot. Can you blame us? 

​The best part of Nanxun, well, of course was how beautiful and charming it was. But the second best part was the signage. There are ample signs around the whole old town, and the English translations were INCREDIBLE. I would expect nothing less. 

I would love if a Chinese speaker could translate for us and tell us what they were going for. Can you imagine if these were actually accurate and the sign makers are simply hippies or high, maybe? We were smiling all day. 

​So, if you have time, a visit to Nanxun is essential. It’s important to see a traditional water town to have a well-rounded view of China. But also, it’s so freaking gorgeous, and, coming from Shanghai especially, seems very calm and relaxed. It was like we had chanced upon a secret they had kindly shared with us.

​Out in the main part of town, things were more like a normal Chinese city, just small. Everyone stared at us, because we were the only non-Chinese people in town like I said, and probably the first in a while. No one spoke English. NO ONE. I’m not complaining, it’s just crazy to find a place where people don’t even know yes and no and good and stuff. It’s a good reminder not to get too complacent, considering how amazing it is that the common language between all travelers is English. (We would witness Japanese tourists speaking with Spanish tourists in Russia and you know what they speak? English. Sub in literally any other country in either of those three spots and the answer was always English. We are so lucky.) But we can’t rest on our imperialist laurels here! Well, everyone knows ‘hello’ at least. In fact, they shout ‘hello hello’ at us every second of the day, but that is standard practice in China. According to a book Z is reading, sometimes Chinese people refer to two white people as ‘two hellos’. It’s not a friendly hello when they shout it at us from the street. But aside from the shouting, people were friendly despite the language barrier. We had two hilarious interactions as we tried to get food and drink. First, we went into a small tea shop for our next required cold drink. They didn’t have English anywhere, and they didn’t know any. Well, the daughter of the owners knew a few words – literally like yes and no – so they kept hoping she would help, but she couldn’t. We used the app to try to read the menu and figured out it was fruit teas. But even with that, it was still so hard to order, but funny. Everyone was laughing, on both sides, as we tried to understand each other enough to proceed. We ordered a peach tea, which sounded good. Z pointed to one his phone said was peach and I held up one finger to signify we wanted one (to share, see if it’s good first!). Finally it seemed like they got it, and they went in the back to  make them. Then they came out with two drinks – one with a half a giant peach in side, pushing out the sides of the plastic, and one yellow one. Apparently, when I held up the one finger, they assumed I was asking for ‘the first one’ in the list, which is a sort of lemonade tea. Oops! Well, better to have two to try! The lemon was way too sweet, but after we drank a little and filled the cup back up with water, it was great. But the peach one was amazing! So if you are in Nanxun go to this little shop and get the peach tea. We ate the peach too, of course. 

​Even funnier was our attempt at finding dinner. Well, it wasn’t ha ha funny at first. We were hungry, and it was impossible to figure out what had vegetarian options when no one spoke English and there weren’t English menus. We didn’t expect those things, but we at least needed a picture menu so we could point to things we wanted. (I have so much newfound appreciation for places with picture menus. No more looking down on them.) But this was a small town and most of the restaurants had menus just scribbled on a board or printed up but without pictures. Finally we found one that had pictures on the wall, but not on a menu. So we gestured towards the wall and asked if we could point to what we wanted. They got it! It was okay! I said the words for ‘vegetarian food’ and pointed at a tofu dish and a few vegetables and he nodded when I asked to make sure ‘vegetarian’. There was no picture of rice but that one is easy enough to get across. We got food! It was good – except the eggplant dish was the Chinese version of vegetarian, meaning it had pork in it. Ughhhhh. More food just for Z. Luckily the greens and the tofu were good and uncontaminated. 

But the best part of this meal was the conversation, again solely via Google Translate and the guy’s phone app for translating. Early, he very frustratedly tried to say something that we just DID NOT understand.  A word apparently in English, but we didn’t get it. He went away, and came back 10 minutes later with a translated statement up on his phone screen “The USA has a place called Las Vegas.” Guy, you’re right and that was totally worth the trouble. 

This happened a lot during the meal, with everyone looking at us and the owner-man coming up every few minutes with his phone queued up with some ridiculous statement. It was amazing. We tried so hard not to laugh every time. But the kicker, oh man, the kicker. At the end, I guess he felt comfortable enough finally in our conversationship to ask us about politics. And not just any politics. but the best political question ever framed. He came up to us, held out his phone, and it read, “Do you support the merchant, president tranp?” We still have bruises from how hard we were kicking each other, trying not to laugh but FAILING MISERABLY. Can you even? The misspelling! The comma! THE MERCHANT! We bring that up every day and still lose our shit laughing. Oh my god. I think we said no but the guy was probably super confused by how hard we were laughing while trying not to. 
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OH man, Nanxun. I love everything about you. 

We were in Nanxun for only 24 hours, but it was one of our fullest visits. The sights were glorious, the hotel was perfection, and the interactions with people were beyond hilarious and adorable. And the signs. My god, the signs. I definitely wholeheartedly recommend a short jaunt here if you are planning to visit Shanghai (2.5 hour drive) or Hangzhou (2 hour drive) – where we headed next.