Various websites said to take the bus
929 zhi there, but we couldn't find that one-I asked over 20 people (including people working at the subway station and the bus station nearby) but nobody could tell me where the bus top was. We only found the
929 bus stop a few minutes down the road from
Subway Line 1's last stop (
PíngGuǒYuán [
苹果园 ] station). 929 goes the same direction for a while, but on the bus stop sign, it doesn't seem to actually go to Cuandixia. From the same bus stop, the bus
892 seems go to
CuànDǐXià CūnKǒu [
爨底下 村口 ] （village entrance).
Around Pingguoyuan Subway Station, here are
private taxis (well, they are people with their own car harassing you and shouting at you to get in) that can take you there. They will try to get 300 RMB from you, but will take you for
100 RMB (but they might continue to get money from you or try to pick up more people along the way, charging them 10 RMB each). The private minivan taxi we got was not in the best condition to be going up the mountain road (no seat belt, air conditioning, suspension...). It was only around
an hour and a half drive from PíngGuǒYuán Station.
We got back with the same driver who took us there - he just hung around town since we kind of had to stay at his cousin's place due to his persistence. I think most drivers are from around the
village so when they take customers who want to stay overnight, they also stay overnight to wait for you. We didn't see any buses around (but public buses should be available) and saw just one taxi that dropped off some customers.
The driver will try to get extra money from you to "get you tickets" for the village instead of buying it at the official entrance (
35 RMB per person for entering the area of scenic historic villages). Basically it seemed like local people can just enter without paying so if you give the driver money to "get you tickets", it's just extra money for him so it depends on what you want to do. We bought official tickets but nobody checked them.
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It's a beautiful old village ( ♦
map ). There were almost no tourists on a weekday in early November-a lot of the guesthouses/restaurants weren't even open. I asked around many places and it was about 60-100 RMB for a room (ones with those heatable brick beds [kang4] can sleep up to 5 people). Some have an ensuite bathroom/shower, but most have bathrooms outside (some are public ones with no individual stall doors). Most places will ask for 100 RMB for the room (either normal beds or kàng [ 炕 ] ) and they all seemed to have some sort of heating anyway-our guesthouse guy said actually burning fire for kàng will make the room smoky and uncomfortable. One place that looked very nice was asking for 780 RMB for a room.
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The rooms are very basic (it's essentially a room in someone's home) and keep in mind this is a farm village so don't expect too much. It's probably
not necessary to book accommodation in advance because almost every house is a guesthouse. I thought it was nice to stay there for the night. Bring snacks and something to do.
room with a kàng bed
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public bathroom
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We had 4 meals there. Food there was nice home cooking. Most menus have similar dishes from 15-128 RMB. To give an idea of prices, most places were charging 55 RMB for the mountain mushrooms and chicken soup. Cold vegetable dishes are around 20 RMB and are pretty good. Breakfast with cabbage, porridge, and MánTóu [ 馒头 ] (steamed Chinese bun) was 10 RMB.
You can
walk another 20 minutes down the road to see the
YíXiànTiān [
一线天 ] gorge where they filmed some movies or another 40 minutes more to the next village
BaiYu [
柏峪 ] (about 4 km up the mountain from CuanDiXia). It was very scenic and not a difficult walk along the road. BaiYu village was very quiet. At first it didn't seem as nice, but if you walk up the steps and around, there are many cool unrestored old courtyards, some just in rubbles.
