In under three hours, China’s bullet trains whisk travelers back 1,200 years in time

By Tracy You, CNN

(CNN) — Visiting Shanghai is an exhilarating experience.

This financial hub of 25 million was seemingly made for skyscraper-ogling, fashion-finding and dumpling-sampling. Its metro system is clean and efficient, making zipping around town — or to the next city — incredibly easy.

But at some point, urban fatigue kicks in, a sign it’s time to disappear into the misty mountains so often captured in traditional Chinese ink paintings.

Thanks to China’s huge network of high-speed railways — the largest on the planet — the calming countryside is never far away.

Take Wuyuan, a rural county in the landlocked province of Jiangxi in eastern China. Less than three hours away from Shanghai by bullet train, it’s filled with centuries-old villages, where white walls and tiled roofs beckon, and hearty meals made with ingredients straight off the farms are the norm.

This juxtaposition offers a fascinating opportunity to soak in both China’s ultra-modern present and its famed past on a short trip.

But, we know traveling in China can be intimidating for first-time visitors. Here’s a quick sample itinerary for those looking for inspiration to take their own high-speed journey into the past, along with advice on how to book train tickets.

Shanghai stop 1: The Stage

Skyscraper admiration isn’t a new thing in Shanghai, but there’s a new angle to do it from. The city’s latest observation deck, a former helipad, provides a perfect spot for snapping a panoramic photo of this futuristic landscape.

Sitting on top of the tallest building on the west side of the city’s Huangpu River, The Stage — at 1,050 feet (320 meters) high — provides a front-row seat to Shanghai’s gigantic financial district across the river.

Thanks to a bend of the Huangpu, it also gives a bird’s-eye view over the famous colonial buildings on the same side of the river. Toy-sized barges chugging down the Huangpu carry various goods, from coal to sand, a reminder that China never stops building.

The best time to inhale the 360-degree vistas is the evening, when one can get a sunset combo ticket that includes a drink.

The Stage entrance is on level B1 of Shanghai’s Magnolia Building at No 501 Dong Daming Road, Hongkou District; RMB240 ($33) per person, RMB288 ($40) for a sunset combo ticket.

Stop 2: The Bund

The granddaddy of all Shanghai attractions, the Bund is a stretch of the Huangpu River’s west bank featuring 52 historic buildings dating back to the early 20th century that were built by banks, trading companies and tycoons from all over the world. The kaleidoscope of styles ranges from Neo-classical to Gothic.

The grandest of them all is the former HSBC building, now the headquarters of the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. Looking to exchange some cash? The ground-floor banking hall features a Greek-style series of murals that dodged the hammers of the Cultural Revolution after a Shanghai architect allegedly had it painted over to protect it.

The Bund is busy day and night, but the early morning offers a rare window of peace enjoyed by just a few pedestrians and people taking exercise.

Nearest metro stop: East Nanjing Road, accessible from lines 2 and 10.

Stop 3: The old town

The old town refers to the original Shanghai, a slice of the city that thrived before the arrival of British settlers in the 1850s. It’s an area roughly half the size of New York’s Central Park and was once surrounded by a long-demolished city wall.

Today, it’s a popular destination for both Chinese and international visitors during the Lunar New Year, thanks to its dazzling lantern show. The rest of the year, it offers a maze of heavily restored old buildings for visitors to get lost in.

Bear in mind, this is a highly commercialized area: almost all traditional residential alleyways have been bulldozed. But the core of the old town around the Yuyuan Garden is worth visiting. The Jiuqu, or nine-turn bridge, zigzags across a small pond inhabited by koi fish, passing the city’s oldest tea house, Huxinting.

On one side of the bridge is the Lu Bo Lang restaurant, where former US president Bill Clinton dined during his visit to Shanghai in 1998. On the other is the Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant, where the city’s famed soup dumplings, or xiaolong mantou, attract long queues.

Nearest metro stop: Yuyuan Garden on lines 10 and 14.

Stop 4: Xuhui riverside promenade

This is Shanghai’s answer to London’s South Bank. Locals go there to have an afternoon stroll, meet their friends, do some cycling or simply kill time. Once the city’s industrial backbone, this part of the riverside, stretching around five miles, has a different pace to the glitzy Bund: things move much slower here.

The former Shanghai Cement Factory now houses a large art space and a mix of shops, restaurants and cafes. West Bund Art & Design, a separate center nearby, has a long-term partnership with the Centre Pompidou in Paris and organizes some of the country’s best Chinese contemporary exhibitions.

Skateboarders congregate in the Riverside Skateboard Park to challenge railings and flights of steps. Pets love it here, too: there is a dedicated park that allows dogs to run off-leash — a rare exception to the city’s strict pet-keeping rules.

The best metro stops to get off are Yunjin Road or Longyao Road station on metro line 11, and Middle Longhua Road on metro lines 7 and 12.

Wuyuan stop 1: Yan village

Wuyuan county, in landlocked Jiangxi province, is the China you see in traditional paintings: rolling fields, winding streams and small villages wedged between verdant mountains.

It only takes two hours and 44 minutes to get there from Shanghai on the fastest bullet train, but their vibes are hundreds of years apart.

With a history of 1,200 years, Wuyuan is famous for two things: bright-yellow rapeseed flowers, which blossom every March; and the big family homes built by ancient Huizhou merchants, who amassed their fortunes between the 15th and 18th centuries by selling salt, tea and wood.

A 20-minute taxi ride away from the Wuyuan train station lies the village of Yan (延村), a typical Huizhou hamlet dating back some 800 years. Tourists need to pay a small fee to get in, but don’t be deceived. Yan is a purely residential village inhabited by farmers. Most of them have the same surname, Jin — a reflection of the clan culture that still runs strong in rural China.

Nearby village Sixi offers the same tranquil feeling and is 20 minutes away on foot via a field-side footpath.

Cost: RMB55 ($8) to enter the villages of Yan and Sixi.

Stop 2: Skywells Hotel

Bought and renovated by a British expat and his Chinese wife, this three-storey boutique hotel in the village of Yan is an attraction on its own. Dating back nearly 300 years, the house was built in classic Huizhou style: tall and thick walls, with tiny windows — features designed to shut out the bandits when the men in the family were traveling to trade.

The centerpiece of the hotel is its interior courtyards, known as skywells, another feature of Huizhou-style architecture. These open-air spaces provide natural light and ventilation, helping the house stay cool. It also enables rainwater, a symbol of fortune, to be collected inside the house.

This 14-room hotel is managed by a village resident who cooks hearty local dishes for guests using vegetables straight from her family’s plot. She is a well of knowledge of where to go and what to do, and makes a mean gin and tonic.

Skywells Hotel, Yan village, Wuyuan, China.

Stop 3: Huangling

Situated on the side of a mountain, this 600-year-old village was initially established by the Cao clan, who moved there from the north to hide from war.

But Huangling grew dilapidated and was partly abandoned until 2009, when a tourism company moved residents to the foot of the mountain and turned the village into a bit of a historic theme park.

Tourists go up the village by cable car, which provides a panoramic view of the terraced fields cascading down into a valley. Its small streets are packed with restaurants, souvenir shops and tea houses. But most people come to see the colorful vegetables dried in round baskets on balconies, a tradition passed down by generations of mountain-dwellers to preserve their harvests.

In need of some extra thrills? Huangling has not one but two glass-bottomed bridges suspended between nearby mountains.

RMB145 ($20) to enter the village via cable car.

Optional city stopover: Suzhou or Hangzhou

Praised by ancient poets as “heavens on earth,” Suzhou and Hangzhou were highly favored by Chinese emperor Qianlong, who journeyed down from Beijing six times in his life in the 18th century to enjoy their scenery and sample their food.

Today’s Chinese travelers still flock there to do the same, albeit by bullet train (or their electric cars). The two cities can be reached by high-speed rail on the Wuyuan to Shanghai route, although not every train stops at both.

A bit more than two hours by train from Wuyuan, Hangzhou is a bustling provincial capital immortalized by its lake, pagodas and rolling green tea fields. This is also China’s e-commerce hub: Alibaba’s co-founder Jack Ma is from the city and the company is headquartered there.

Forty minutes from Hangzhou or half an hour from Shanghai by train, Suzhou has some of China’s most beautiful ancient gardens. Built by the local literati hundreds of years ago, they have ponds, pavilions, dreamy willow trees, together with “artificial mountains” made with rocks hauled up from the nearby Taihu Lake.

How to buy train tickets in China

International travelers can buy train tickets at the train station with their passports, or book them via various apps. “Railway 12306” is China’s official railway ticketing app and has an English-language version.

All train tickets in China are linked to the ticket holders’ ID cards or passports, so app users will need to submit a photo of their documents while setting up an account on 12306. That will allow them to enter the train station by scanning the same documents.

The app also has a guide containing practical information for international travelers, such as how to pay for items and where to get a SIM card.

A bullet-train ticket for the Shanghai-Wuyuan route costs between RMB193 and 292 ($27-41) one way.

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