Which are the some best beautiful small town in china?
 

Which are the some best beautiful small town in china?

Turpan （吐鲁番）is my favorite thus far.

It's definitely high on my list, but I prefer Xinjiang, due to the lack of Chinese tourists (many people are afraid of it).

Another obvious small beautiful town is 桂林市 - Guilin and surrounding areas including 阳朔县- Yangshuo area. It also can be a tad touristy but the reason why these towns are so touristy is because they have some spectacular scenery.

If you're in the highly touristic Yellow Mountain area (conveniently reachable by HSR to Huangshan now straight from Shanghai in <2hrs) then I'd suggest visiting 潜口明代居民建筑群

The whole Huizhou area is full with old, smaller cities/villages, and imho there are plenty of corners that are far from being overly touristic (but developed enough to easy get-around) in the whole area, worth to rent a car (if you got a licence) or hire a driver to experience the various sights - personally I found it MUCH more interesting to roam around in the Huizhou area than the Yellow mountains themselves (which, honestly, are great for a longish hike, but you've to move away from the touristic paths..)

Huizhou Ancient City is also nearby, but more touristic imho.

I've only been to Guilin and Yangshuo once....during the October holiday. It wasn't especially expensive, but the crowds were insane. Basically, avoid Golden Weeks if you fancy visiting popular spots.

鳳凰 (Fenghuang) is in Hunan province and is a good side trip from the natural marvels at Zhangjiajie. It is a beautiful historic town with a river setting.

Lijiang is a stunner but is unfortunately over-commercialized and very well touristed.

I completely forgot about Hunan because I haven't been since the "Super Girl" days (had a number of friends who worked on the show). Changsha doesn't fulfill the "small city" criteria, but it's pretty nice, and once you're there, it's easy to get to more quaint places.

Back on the Xinjiang topic that I introduced in post 2, I sort of like Kashgar, but mainly because the train ride (~half the way back to Beijing or Shanghai) is really cool, and there are numerous places to break the trip up along the way.

Not easy to visit but there are many interesting small villages in the Guizhou province. So far my favorite province to visit in China. Beautiful scenery, colourful minority villages and few tourists. Just avoid the touristy places like Xijiang or Anshun.
https://www.lostwithpurpose.com/villages-guizhou/

Interesting thread, I am also intrigued by some of the places up in the north west of China... The road less explored.

My main frustration is that as a short term visitor to China I am not supposed to drive or rent a vehicle to get around off the beaten track, being dependent upon public transport or drivers to get around is much more of a faff, although the advent of Didi and similar has made this much much easier than it used to be. I do realise that the restrictions on renting a vehicle are probably 90% for my own protection due to the way the locals drive, and what a pickle a non-chinese person would end up in if there was some kind of accident. I think there are limited concessions for short term visitors to rent and drive within a few of the big cities but is the forum aware of any general movement on access to rental vehicles within China. Give me a car, some GPS maps, internet, and a translation app and I'm a happy holiday maker.

Prepandemic, when we went off the beaten path, we just hired a driver for the whole day. The benefit of having a local driver was, he knew what was worth visiting, really crazy off the beaten, local must-see locations, and where to eat local food. We have done this at least a dozen times, only one driver was useless and we learned our lesson that we need to hire a local driver, not a 外地人 (nonlocal hired worker).

Especially in rural areas, if I was obviously a foreign-looking tourist, I would be afraid of idiots crashing in to me for money. The money they can extract from you is far more than they can earn.

I agree with you that hiring driver(s) for day trips is preferable to renting a car without a Chinese drivers licence. However, I would attempt to prepare the itinerary by myself. A private driver won't force you stop at gift shops, but might be inclined to bring you to "Disneyfied" tourist attractions. For example, many of us like unrestored Great Wall spots, but locals think we are insane.

Agree! It is all about communication.

While we always had a general itinerary in mind, we bounced it off the local driver. For example, we wanted to go to the Dujiangyan Irrigation System World Heritage Site, on the way, he stopped at this out of the way dirt track, we saw the Dujiangyan from the opposite side, it was a great view.

For me, the lunch stop was the best. The driver's choice has been never wrong. Each time, it has been a no tourist, local's only, little dive that was memorable.

Memo to all: if you don't have lunch with your driver, give him Y50 so he can eat by himself. I'm generally opposed to tipping, but it costs him less than Y10 to eat lunch in or near his house, and you really don't want him to be starving at the end of the day when he drives you back to your hotel.