East China · Zhejiang · Tonglu, Hangzhou
The Fuchun River runs straight through it — part of the real-world scenery in the scroll "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains." Lately, one abandoned old house after another has turned into a village café, giving old-town slow living a new shape.
Why it's special
A 600-year-old landscape scroll, a river that still runs the same course, and a wave of young owners turning old houses into cafés — three layers stacked in one small city.
Tonglu sits in northwestern Zhejiang, with the Fuchun River running straight through it — in 2015 it ranked first nationwide among county-level cities for resident well-being. The Yuan-dynasty painter Huang Gongwang spent his late years at a hermitage called "Xiaodongtian" beside the Fuchun River (in what's now Fuyang district's Miaoshanwu), painting "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" over several years — a scroll depicting the river's scenery from Fuyang down to Tonglu. Tonglu's stretch of river is part of what that scroll actually shows. In recent years, riverside villages like Shen'ao, Difu and Meirong have taken up rural-art renovation: old houses turned into cafés, an old oil press turned into a viral "village café," giving these once-quiet villages a new way to be visited. The trade-off is real too — the villages are spread out, reachable mainly by taxi or hired car, at a much slower pace than a dense old-town circuit.
Fuchun River scenery
Rural-art village renewal
The village-café scene
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