桥溪村 Bridge Creek Village

About three to four hours northwest of Shantou lies a gorgeous mountain getaway that is like a little piece of Yunnan cut up and transplanted to northern Guangdong. If nature is your thing, Bridge Creek Village is for you.

The village is nestled at the back of a gorge about an hour outside of Meizhou. It is twenty minutes past a well-known tea plantation resort, Yan Nan Fei, Wild Goose Flying South tea plantation. While there are buses that run up that way, your best bet is to simply hire a taxi from the Meizhou bus station (80-100 RMB).

The village itself is full of old houses, many of which still have the faded slogans of the 1960s on the walls. But I was more interested in the natural surroundings. I took a long hike along the creek up into the mountains. A kind of stone trail winds through tea fields, and then into the forest and up the mountain.The nature is simply stunning, and once you are twenty minutes or so down the trail, people disappear.

There are probably six or seven guesthouses in the village, all fairly similar. Small rooms for about 100 RMB a night. Food choices are limited to the animals running around the yard and a bit expensive (25-30 RMB a dish) but good. We stayed at the last guest house on the right, as you walk toward the back of the village and the mountains. A nice place run by a nice family, but I strongly suggest NOT going during one of the major national holidays. At one point I counted 57 people and 19 cars in the driveway of the little guesthouse, which is probably suitable for about 15 people max.

There is a pretty good blog entry (in Chinese) on the village here, with photographs.