enter Anhui Province via water
A special way to enter Anhui Province is via water. This route is hardly (if at all) described in any english guide book, but can be found on many Chinese sites (that are no use if you cannot read Mandarin).From Hangzhou you can take a local bus to Qiandaohu, a town at the shore of the lake with the same name. You will most probable be directed to the tourists boats that do nothing more than an over-priced cruise over the lake. Those are not the boats you want to be on!Your mission is to go to the ferry-pier for the locals. From this pier the boats to Anhui Province also depart. The whole trip takes about 5-6 hours depending of course where you want to get off the boat.We departed at a little place in the middle of nowhere and from there we took local transport to Tunxi, so we could visit XiDi and Hongcun the following day.
