Chikanzhen — Attraction in Jiangmen

Absolutely worth visiting. An interesting story and unique truly historical location. It has been "doctored up" a bit, but the history is still there. The historical area is actually quite large and will take a while to walk through. It is especially beautiful at night, so it's worth timing your visit to appreciate both the day and night versions. Most of the stores are vacant and the building fronts are a facade. There are still a decent number of shops and restaurants. This area was clearly built up in anticipation of a volume of tourists that never manifested. This is kind of typical of many Chinese locations. Pair a visit of the town with the local diaolous and you have an amazing weekend getaway. I was there in December and the holiday events were occuring, so the lights were a lot extra. 600 rmb entrance fee. Lots of public parking. If there was public transport to here, I couldn't figure it out. We took a Didi from our hotel in Kaiping. If you decide to stay in one of the hotels here, it is inconvenient as no cars are allowed in the city. I think the hotels do offer pickup from the gates. The hotels are beautiful, so if you are content to stay in the city and don't want to go anywhere else, it...

It might surprise people but the problem with the Chikan ancient town is actually that it’s not touristy enough. Surely there were a whole lot of tourists there (mostly locals, because they made it free for the locals), but the local tourists were not the annoyance. We think that the place was both restored and designed for filming, not for tourists, and that was why it was very frustrating to navigate the sites. There were a zillion bridges and only did we get to the end of the bridges did we see that the other end was blocked for entry. It was incredibly complicated to get into the ancient town from the hotel area, and the whole experience was just frustrating. Also, when we looked at these buildings we had to keep asking — wait is this new or original?! From a history point of view the restoration was not in line with the original character of the old structures and it was just not cool. If you stay at the hotels there the entrance ticket...

A very quiet place in the morning. We drove there instead of joining a tour group. Close to 2 hours from Foshan 佛山.

It reminded me of one of those theme parks in Japan - unusually quiet, compared with others. Reason being, I believe, because it’s out of the way. The key source probably comes from guided tour people signed up.

Came here because it’s among the collective of the UNESCO World Heritage site.

It is a village worth visiting, I feel - as the structures are well kept, though again, the Chinese had added some blocks here and there to modernise it so that it is ready to...