The booking wall verified
These sell out or block foreigners if you arrive unprepared — the dates, the official link, and whether your passport works.
Huangyao Ancient Town (黄姚古镇)
✓ 2026-06-13- Release
- Real-name entry with your passport; the scenic area runs an online reservation/booking system, and you should book ahead on weekends and in holiday peaks
- Price
- —
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Entry is real-name, so you reserve with your passport. The official scenic-area channel is its own booking system (the 景区预约 / online-booking pages on the Huangyao site and its WeChat mini-program), which is Chinese-first; OTAs such as Trip.com and Klook also list Huangyao tickets that foreigners can book. The simplest path is to have your hotel or guesthouse reserve it for you with your passport details, or just buy at the gate ticket office, which still sells entry. Bring your passport — it's your ID at the gate.
officialBookingUrl is huangyao.cn, the genuine official site of the scenic area (operated by 广西贺州黄姚古镇投资有限公司, ICP 桂ICP备19009669号); booking runs through its own reservation pages and mini-program, and the OTAs. Price hedged to null deliberately: published figures cluster around ¥90-100 full price, and the scenic area's own 2026 China-Tourism-Day promo advertised a half-price ticket at ¥44 (implying roughly ¥88 full), but the standard fare moves with season and promotions, so confirm the current price when you book rather than trusting a number here. Huangyao is a national 5A scenic area founded in the Song dynasty (around 972), ~60-70 km southwest of Hezhou city in Zhaoping County; reached by direct buses from Hezhou Railway Station, the City West passenger station and the Central Bus Station, and also by bus from Wuzhou, Yangshuo and Guilin. This is the headline reason to come.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Gupo Mountain National Forest Park (姑婆山)
✓ 2026-06-13- Price
- ¥82
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Walk-up gate ticket with your passport; buy at the entrance or, on busy days, through the scenic area's mini-program or an OTA. The in-park sightseeing car is a separate small add-on. Reached by city bus 17 from Hezhou Railway Station, or a special express bus a few times a day; the ride is about 30 minutes.
officialBookingUrl is guposhan.com, the scenic area's own site (cross-referenced as the official Gupo Mountain channel from the Huangyao scenic-area site's partner links). Entrance has long been quoted around ¥82, with the in-park sightseeing car a separate roughly ¥15; reconfirm both at the gate. Gupo Mountain is a forest-and-waterfalls national park north of the city: a lower zone of landscaped trails and smaller falls reachable by shuttle, and a long summit climb (5-7 hours round trip) for the fit only. Two honest warnings travellers report: monkeys at the entrance area will snatch food, so don't carry it openly, and litter on the upper trail can be bad. Pleasant green half-day rather than a must-see on Huangyao's level.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Shibashui (十八水) waterfalls park
✓ 2026-06-13- Price
- ¥86
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Walk-up gate ticket; passport fine as ID. Take tourist bus 17 from Hezhou Railway Station, get off at the Shibashui intersection and walk west about 1.5 km. No advance booking needed in normal periods.
officialBookingUrl set to null: the park lists a site (shibashui.com) but we could not independently cross-confirm it as a clean, live official ticketing domain, so we are not putting it in a URL field — buy at the gate or via an OTA, and confirm. Shibashui ('eighteen waters') is a waterfall-and-rock park in Pinggui District, north of the city near Huangtian, with a chain of about ten cascades dropping nearly 300 m; locals bill it as a 'Lingnan Jiuzhaigou', which oversells it, but it's a genuinely scenic walk in wet season. Entrance long quoted around ¥86; reconfirm at the gate. It sits close to the Jade Stone Forest, so the two pair into a day out of the city.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Jade Stone Forest (玉石林)
✓ 2026-06-13- Price
- ¥83
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Walk-up gate ticket with your passport. Take city bus 4, get off at the Luhua Village Committee (路花村委) stop, then walk southeast about 1 km. No advance booking needed in normal periods.
officialBookingUrl is gxysl.com, the scenic area's own site (cross-referenced as the official Jade Stone Forest channel from the Huangyao scenic-area site's partner links). A karst stone forest in Huangtian Town north of the city, unusual because its pillars are largely white marble ('Han white jade', 汉白玉) rather than the usual grey limestone, which gives it its name. Entrance long quoted around ¥83; reconfirm at the gate. A compact 1-2 hour stop, naturally combined with Shibashui nearby; skippable if you're short on time and saving yourself for Huangyao.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Landing & registration
The first-24-hours facts: hotels, police registration, and whether your card works.
- Hotels take foreigners
- Mixed — check first
- Foreign card via Alipay/WeChat
- mixed
- Police registration
- Hezhou is a quiet eastern-Guangxi prefecture city that sees very few independent foreign travellers, so foreign registration is hit-or-miss outside the bigger hotels. Your safer bets for registering a foreign passport with the police are the four-star and chain properties in Hezhou city — the Hezhou International Hotel in the centre, or a chain like the Vienna International near the high-speed station — rather than small local guesthouses. Out at Huangyao the picture is different again: the old town is full of guesthouses and homestays (民宿), and many of the larger, licensed ones inside or just outside the walls do register foreigners, but the smallest family rooms may not be set up for it, so confirm 'can you register a foreign passport (外国护照)?' before you pay. Carry your original passport everywhere — it's your ID for every scenic-area ticket and for hotel check-in. Mobile pay (a foreign Visa or Mastercard linked to Alipay or WeChat Pay) works for tickets, taxis and restaurants in town, but keep some cash on you, because acceptance and signal get patchier on the local buses and out in the countryside between sights.
Eat like a local
What to order, where locals actually queue, and the food-street traps to skip.
Huangyao's signature product is its douchi (黄姚豆豉) — fermented black soybeans, one of the town's celebrated 'three treasures'. These aren't a tourist gimmick: Huangyao douchi has a real local reputation, cured the slow way and used to lift stir-fries, steamed fish and tofu with a deep, savoury, slightly funky saltiness. You'll see open jars and bagged douchi sold all along the old-town lanes; it's the obvious edible souvenir to take home, and dishes cooked with it — douchi steamed fish, douchi with bitter greens — are worth ordering in the town's restaurants. The other two 'treasures' are huangjing wine (黄精酒, a tonic rice liquor) and dried preserved plums (话梅).
Down in Hezhou city the food turns to local Guangxi and Hakka country cooking — Hezhou bills itself as a 'hometown of the Hakka'. A genuine local oddity to look for is niuchang suan (牛肠酢), a fermented-rice-and-offal speciality that's an acquired taste but a real Hezhou thing rather than a tourist invention. More broadly you'll eat well on stuffed tofu (酿豆腐, a Hakka staple), clay-pot dishes — river-snail clay pot is a regional favourite — sour-soup fish, chopped-chilli fish head, and the oil-tea (油茶) of the surrounding counties. Skip the fancy-looking tourist restaurants and follow the busy local places near the markets.
As everywhere in Guangxi, the cheap, reliable everyday meal is a bowl of rice noodles. You'll find the regional styles — broth noodles, dry-mixed bowls, and the cured-meat and pickled-vegetable toppings Guangxi does so well — at noodle shops all over Hezhou city and around the bus and train stations, often for a handful of yuan. It's the right breakfast or quick lunch, especially on a travel day heading out to Huangyao. Point at what looks good, and you'll eat cheaply and well; the food here is solidly local, with little in the way of a Western-food scene outside the bigger hotels.
The honest layer
The part a tourism board will never print.
Unlike a lot of China's 'ancient towns', Huangyao isn't a recent concrete rebuild dressed up for tourists: it's a real Song-dynasty settlement, founded around the year 972, with eight stone-paved streets running about three kilometres, stone arch bridges (the Dailong Bridge dates to the Ming, 1576, and even made it onto a national postage stamp), centuries-old banyan trees draped over the water, and old temples, an ancient stage and merchant courtyards that are actually old. It's been a filming location for good reason. Be clear-eyed that it is commercialised — it's a ticketed 5A scenic area, the lanes are lined with guesthouses, snack stalls, douchi shops and rented-hanfu photo spots, and at peak times it's busy. But the bones of the place are the real thing, which is more than you can say for many headline old towns. Come for Huangyao; everything else here is a bonus.
The single best move at Huangyao is to sleep inside or just outside the walls. The town fills with bus day-trippers from late morning to mid-afternoon, and empties again in the evening. If you stay over, you get the stone lanes at dusk and again at dawn — lantern light on the water, mist over the river, almost nobody around — which is the Huangyao people fall in love with, and the one most day-visitors never see. There are plenty of guesthouses and homestays in and around the old town; just confirm the place can register a foreign passport before you pay, since the smallest family rooms may not be set up for it. A night here beats a rushed day trip every time.
Huangyao is not in Hezhou city; it's roughly 60-70 km southwest in Zhaoping County, and getting there is a real leg of the trip. Direct buses run from Hezhou Railway Station, the City West passenger station and the Central Bus Station, and you can also reach Huangyao directly by bus from Wuzhou, Yangshuo and Guilin — which means many travellers sensibly fold Huangyao into a Guilin/Yangshuo itinerary rather than backtracking through Hezhou city at all. Decide your approach before you book a hotel: if Huangyao is your only real target, basing yourself in or near the old town (or coming straight from Yangshuo) makes far more sense than staying in Hezhou city and commuting out.
Hezhou's other sights — Gupo Mountain's forest park, the Shibashui waterfalls, the Jade Stone Forest's white-marble karst — are decent green half-days if you have spare time, but none is on Huangyao's level and they're spread out, each with its own gate fee around ¥80-86. Gupo in particular is a long park: a lower zone of landscaped trails reachable by shuttle, plus a serious 5-7 hour summit climb for the fit only, with monkeys that steal food near the entrance and litter on the upper trail. If your trip is short, give Huangyao the time and treat these as optional. If you have an extra day in the city, Shibashui and the Jade Stone Forest sit close together north of town and pair into one outing.
Straight answers
How do I get to Huangyao Ancient Town, and is it really old?
Huangyao is about 60-70 km southwest of Hezhou city in Zhaoping County. Direct buses run from Hezhou Railway Station, the City West passenger station and the Central Bus Station, and you can also reach it directly by bus from Wuzhou, Yangshuo and Guilin — so many travellers fold it into a Guilin/Yangshuo trip. And yes, it's genuinely old: a Song-dynasty town founded around 972, with real centuries-old stone streets, Ming-era bridges, ancient banyans and old temples. It's commercialised as a ticketed 5A scenic area, but the historic fabric is authentic, not a modern rebuild.
Should I do Huangyao as a day trip or stay overnight?
Stay overnight if you can. The town fills with day-trippers from late morning to mid-afternoon and empties in the evening, so an overnight inside or just outside the walls buys you the stone lanes at dusk and dawn with almost nobody around — the best of Huangyao. There are plenty of guesthouses and homestays; just confirm the place can register a foreign passport before you pay, since the smallest family rooms may not be.
Do I need to book Huangyao tickets ahead, and what does entry cost?
Entry is real-name, so you reserve with your passport — through the official Huangyao reservation system and WeChat mini-program (Chinese-first), an OTA like Trip.com or Klook, or simply at the gate ticket office, which still sells entry. Book ahead on weekends and in holiday peaks. On price, we've deliberately not pinned a number: published full-price figures cluster around ¥90-100, and the scenic area's own 2026 promo ran a half-price ¥44 ticket (implying about ¥88 full), but it shifts with season and promotions, so confirm the current fare when you book.
What else is worth doing around Hezhou, and do I need my passport?
Beyond Huangyao, Hezhou offers green half-days: Gupo Mountain National Forest Park (forest, waterfalls, a long summit climb, watch the food-snatching monkeys, around ¥82 plus a ¥15 shuttle), the Shibashui waterfalls (around ¥86), and the Jade Stone Forest's white-marble karst (around ¥83); none rivals Huangyao, and Shibashui and the Jade Stone Forest pair into one outing north of the city. Carry your passport throughout — as across China, it's your ID for every scenic-area ticket and for hotel check-in, and you'll enter its details when booking online.