Tucked away on the southeastern coast of Zhejiang Province,
WENZHOU appears at first glance to be an obscure provincial backwater. However, despite its lack of historical associations, its location on the sea is crucial. The inhabitants of southern Zhejiang, along with Fujian to the south - hemmed in on the coast by the mountainous interior - have for centuries looked out to the sea, rather than to the mainland, for their livelihood. Shipping, fishing and trading have been the mainstay of the economy, while politically the tendency has been to ignore the rest of China altogether, an inclination that can still be seen today both in the notoriously eccentric local dialect and in the free-market economy gone wild. Smuggling and the pirating of brand-named products have always been popular sidelines down here. Now, with the city attracting significant amounts of overseas (mainly Taiwanese) investment, local entrepreneurial skills have made this a boom town like no other in China - many attribute their business know-how to their eleventh-century Jewish trader ancestors.
Quite apart from the difficulty of getting here, the effect of this economic maelstrom on tourism is questionable. Although Wenzhou has plenty of hotels, its attractions are mainly confined to Jiangxin Park in the middle of the Ou River, a moderately interesting waterfront, and a surprisingly well-preserved old city, dating to the days when it was a prosperous foreign treaty port , from the 1870s onwards. Farther afield lies the Yandang Shan nature park, with excellent walking opportunities, pagodas and lush scenery.
The Town
The old town centre corresponds roughly to the area facing onto the broad
Ou River to the north, bounded by the two important shopping streets, Xinhe Lu and Jiefang Lu, to the west and east respectively. To the south, the area is bordered approximately by Renmin Lu, although you'll see that the bulldozers and architects of the modern city are encroaching steadily over this line. The city has been subject to an extensive facelift over the past few years, and the main shopping street, the pedestrianized
Wuma Jie , has been transformed from a charming jumble of mom-and-pop shops into a mix of modern boutiques. Farther towards the river, though, life is still much as it has always been, with some unexpected old stone facades above the shop entrances.
There are also a few specific sights worth searching out. Right in the middle of the old town area, on Canghe Xiang, is the Wenzhou Cultural Artefacts Shop , where all kinds of art-related objects (including brushes, paints, scrolls and some antiques) are on sale in an interesting old building. Just south of here, suddenly looming up on Cheng Xi Jie, is an incongruous Christian Church , a gothic building of black brick dating back to 1778, originally built by a British missionary. Many residents of the surrounding streets here are fervent Christians, and if you enquire they'll gladly show you into their church, though it's nothing special inside. A few minutes south, on Zhouzhaisi Xiang running east from Xinhe Jie, is the rather larger but less attractive Catholic Church , dating to 1888 during the treaty port era. One rather more typically Chinese sight is the Miaoguo (daily 8am-5pm; ¥3), on Renmin Xi Lu, on the southern side of Songtai Hill. Originally constructed in the Tang dynasty, more than a thousand years ago, this temple has been rebuilt many times, most recently in 1984.
The major tourist sight of Wenzhou, however, is Jiangxin Park , an island located a few minutes offshore in the Ou River to the north of town. The park - where no cars are allowed - contains a number of pavilions, towers and gardens, and is well worth two or three hours for a stroll or a picnic among the huge old trees. The most notable features of the island's skyline are its two towers ; of these the one to the east is old and decrepit, but the western one has been fully restored. To reach the island, go to the jetty at the northern end of Maxingseng Jie from where boats run every few minutes (daily 6.30am-4pm; ¥7 combined boat ride and island entrance fee). Returning from the island, you pay another ¥3 when you disembark townside. At the time of writing, a bridge was under construction, and there were plans to introduce a bus service to the island.
