2-Day Escape from Yangshuo: Old Town, Country Life, Tea Plantation

Drive out of Yangshuo for about two hours, we will arrive in Huangyao, a thousand years old fortress-like village boasting of its time-honored theater, stone bridges, old-style houses, and ancestral halls. At the entrance of the old town, you can also visit the former site of the CPC Guangxi Province Committee to learn about some history of the Chinese Communist Party.

In the afternoon, drive around 20 minutes out of the town to reach a farmhouse in Hakka style for a pleasant countryside experience. There, you will taste the most authentic Hakka cuisine and reminisce about the country life which is fading away in the modern world: picking seasonal fruits or vegetables in the garden, helping the host sowing or fertilizing, or building a simple stove with earth clods to roast chicken or sweet potatoes in the methods usually used by village children, sinking into a bamboo chair to enjoy the sunset and the distant mountains, or drinking tea and play mahjong in the old house. It seems the time has slowed down here.

Overnight: the Hakka style family inn
Meals: Lunch, Dinner

Enjoy a fresh morning before a farmyard breakfast and then another 1.5 hours' drive will take you to the Nanshan tea plantation. The tea garden is only about three kilometers out of the county town of Zhaoping but seems far away from the madding crowd. Here, you can not only enjoy the scenic tea field and mountains but also can try tea-plucking and tea-processing in traditional ways. At the foot of the tea mountain, there are two rows of small tiled houses that once accommodated the educated urban youth working in the countryside between the 1960s and 1970s. There you will see the necessities of their daily life and work, and slogans from Chairman Mao.

After descending from the mountain, taste the local cuisine at a boat restaurant and then drive about 2.5 hours back to Yangshuo.

Meals: Breakfast, Lunch