Six routes, chosen by who you are — not how many days you have
Anji is not one destination. It is tea country, bamboo workshops, five forgotten trade trails, a museum cluster, a resort mountain and a Ming-era wall — and most visitors only ever see one of them.
There is no single best Anji itinerary, so we published six routes instead of one: tea (half day, spring), bamboo (half day, rain-proof), ancient trails (half day each, free), family learning (full day), resort circuit (two days), and old towns (half day, good in rain). Each one lists its stops in order, how long it really takes, and the honest advice we give on the phone.
Pick by who you are
Match the traveller to the route, then read the section below it for stops and timing.
| If you are… | Route | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You drink tea seriously | Route 01 · 茶之旅 | Picking, pan-firing and two proper teahouses. Late March to May. |
| It might rain, or you have small children | Route 02 · 竹之旅 | Two museums, one shop, one hotel lunch — all indoors, all flat. |
| You want nobody else on the path | Route 03 · 古道徒步之旅 | Five flagstone trade routes. Free, unmarked, and where locals go on holidays. |
| The children should make something | Route 04 · 亲子研学之旅 | Natural history museum, a real dig site, and a craft workshop. |
| It is your first time and you want the hits | Route 05 · 休闲度假之旅 | Cloud sea, bamboo, reservoir sunset, and the iron-flower show at night. |
| You have had enough mountains | Route 06 · 古镇文化探索之旅 | A Ming wall, a painter's birthplace, and a street that still folds open. |
The tea route · 茶之旅
From bush to cup, on the slowest road in the county
- 白茶原小镇Baicha Yuan tea town
- 宋茗茶博园Songming Tea Garden
- 在安茶馆Zai'an teahouse
- 百福堂茶堂Baifutang tea hall
Anji Bai Cha is the county's quiet claim to fame: a green tea picked in a two-week window each spring, when the buds are still pale and the leaf has not darkened. This route follows it from the bush to the cup, and it is the one itinerary here that rewards going slowly instead of covering ground.
Start at Baicha Yuan, the tea town on the edge of the growing area, where the terraces are still worked by hand and you can pick a handful of buds yourself in season. Songming Tea Garden adds the processing side — the withering racks, the wok, the smell that stays on your hands for the rest of the day. Then sit down properly: Zai'an and Baifutang are teahouses, not gift shops, and a cold-brewed Bai Cha in September is why locals drink it iced.
- Time needed
- Half day · 4–5 h with driving
- Best months
- Late March–May, then September
- Suits
- Tea drinkers, couples, anyone who wants one good activity rather than five
- Stops
- 4 on this route
The bamboo route · 竹之旅
The rain-proof version: two museums, one shop, one long lunch
- 安吉竹博园Bamboo Expo Park
- 竹博园开元度假酒店Kaiyuan resort, lunch
- 两山优品汇Liangshan goods hall
- 竹印象博物馆Bamboo Impression Museum
Anji's bamboo is not a sight, it is a material culture — flooring, baskets, fibre, food, and an industry that employs a good share of the county. This route stays indoors and stays close: all four stops sit within twenty minutes of each other, which makes it the itinerary we run when the forecast is wrong.
The Bamboo Expo Park is the anchor: 300-plus species, four giant pandas and live weaving. The Bamboo Impression Museum goes deeper into how the plant became an economy. Liangshan Youpin Hui is where you buy the good things — cut boards, lamps, bowls — without the scenic-area markup, and the Kaiyuan hotel does a solid lunch with a garden the children can run in.
- Time needed
- Half day · 4 h
- Best months
- Any month. Built for wet days
- Suits
- Families, craft lovers, anyone who has already seen enough mountains
- Stops
- 4 on this route
The ancient trail route · 古道徒步之旅
Five stone-paved trade routes, worn into shallow bowls by feet
- 半岭古道Banling trail
- 独松关古道Dusongguan pass
- 南坞山古道Nanwu Shan trail
- 羊角岭古道Yangjiaoling trail
- 章里古道Zhangli trail
These are the roads that existed before the roads: postal and trading routes between Anji and the neighbouring counties, paved in flagstone and worn into shallow bowls by centuries of feet. They are free, mostly unmarked in English, and on a public holiday they are where the county's own families go to escape the crowds.
Dusongguan is the famous one — a Song-dynasty pass with a gatehouse ruin and a tea stall at the bottom — and it is also the busiest. Banling, Nanwu Shan, Yangjiaoling and Zhangli are quieter and shorter, walked mainly by locals collecting bamboo shoots. Yangjiaoling has the real climb; Banling has the stream, and is the one to choose after rain.
- Time needed
- 2–4 h per trail · pick one
- Best months
- October–November, April–May
- Suits
- Walkers who would rather meet nobody; anyone avoiding the big-ticket parks
- Stops
- 5 on this route
The family learning route · 亲子研学之旅
Museum, dig site, tea field, bamboo forest, and something to take home
- 浙江自然博物院安吉馆Natural History Museum
- 古城国家考古遗址公园Gucheng dig site
- 宋茗茶博园Songming Tea Garden
- 安吉竹博园Bamboo Expo Park
- 安吉非遗体验馆Heritage craft centre
The county has quietly assembled one of the best family-learning clusters in Zhejiang, and almost none of it appears in English-language guides. This is the route we run when a family says the children should actually do something rather than be photographed in front of it.
The Natural History Museum's Anji branch is the star — dinosaur halls, a serious geology collection, free entry, and enough interactives to hold a seven-year-old for three hours. Gucheng adds real archaeology: a walled site you walk through instead of reading about. Then the hands-on half: picking and pan-firing tea at Songming, and a bamboo or papercraft workshop at the heritage centre, where the children take home the thing they made.
- Time needed
- Full day · 7–8 h
- Best months
- Any month; best in school holidays
- Suits
- Families with children aged 5–14 who want them to do, not just look
- Stops
- 5 on this route
The resort route · 休闲度假之旅
Cloud sea, bamboo wind, a reservoir sunset and a 1,600°C iron show
- 云上草原Yunshang Grassland
- 中国大竹海China Bamboo Sea
- 江南天池Jiangnan Tianchi
- 余村Yucun village
- 余村瀑布咖啡Yucun waterfall café
- 奇幻嘉乐比Qihuan Jiale Bi
- 中南百草原Zhongnan Baicaoyuan
- Hello Kitty 乐园Hello Kitty Park
The full hit list, arranged so you are not in a car all day: mountain in the morning, bamboo valley at midday, village and café in the afternoon, night show to finish. It is also the route that proves Anji is not one attraction — a cloud resort, a bamboo forest, a reservoir, a model village and two theme parks, all inside forty minutes of each other.
Cloud Prairie for the cloud sea and the cliff park, the Bamboo Sea for the flat shaded walk, Jiangnan Tianchi for sunset over the water. Yucun is the village that gave the country the phrase 'lucid waters and lush mountains', and its waterfall café is where you stop pretending to be busy. Then 奇幻嘉乐比 after dark, for the molten-iron flower show — 1,600°C iron thrown against a cold wall — which is the best thing in the county to do with children in the evening.
- Time needed
- 2 days · or 3 stops in one
- Best months
- Year-round; the iron show runs evenings
- Suits
- First-timers, families, anyone who wants the greatest hits without the rushing
- Stops
- 8 on this route
The old-town route · 古镇文化探索之旅
A Ming wall, a painter's birthplace, and a street that still opens on hinges
- 吴昌硕纪念馆Wu Changshuo Memorial
- 安吉生态博物馆Eco Museum
- 孝丰古镇 · 南门老街Xiaofeng old street
- 安城城墙Ancheng city wall
- 古城遗址公园Ancient city site
- 鄣吴古村落Zhangwu village
Anji is not a water town. There are no canal lanes and no gondolas, and any guide that promises them is selling you Suzhou. What the county does have is a Ming rampart you can walk on, a set of merchant houses with their original wooden shopfronts, the birthplace of one of China's great modern painters, and a village that has been continuously lived in for a thousand years.
Start with Wu Changshuo — seal-carver, calligrapher, painter, born in Zhangwu, whose handwriting is on half the shop signs in Shanghai. Xiaofeng's South Gate street is the best-preserved old commercial street in the county: noodle shops, a barber, doors that still fold open on iron hinges. Ancheng's wall is the genuine article, not a reconstruction, and the lanes behind Zhangwu's memorial are the real reason to drive out there.
- Time needed
- Half day · 4 h
- Best months
- Rainy mornings, and any weekday
- Suits
- Culture-first travellers, photographers, people who have had enough of nature
- Stops
- 6 on this route
Frequently asked questions
Which route should I pick if I only have one day?
Route 05 (resort) if you want the postcard version of Anji — cloud sea in the morning, bamboo at midday, the iron-flower show after dark. Route 04 if you are travelling with children, because the museum and the workshop fill a day without a single long drive. Route 01 if it is spring and you care about tea more than scenery.
Do these routes need a car?
Yes, realistically. Public buses connect the county town to Yunshang Grassland and the Bamboo Sea, but the tea town, the ancient trails and Zhangwu village are not served, and taxis are hard to find coming back. A car with a driver for the day costs ¥650–900 from Hangzhou and ¥1,100–1,400 from Shanghai.
Are the ancient trails free?
All five are free and open. Dusongguan has a small tea stall and a car park; the others have neither, which is the point. There are no English signposts and phone signal drops within twenty minutes of the trailhead.
Can we combine two routes in one trip?
Usually yes, if you pair a half-day with a half-day: tea in the morning and old towns after lunch works well because they are on opposite sides of the county town. Two full-day routes back to back is too much driving — pick one full day and one half day.
Tell us which route sounds like your trip
Send us a route number and your dates. You get a day-by-day plan, a car price and the stops we would cut — usually within two hours.