Zhenyuan's old town occupies the south bank of the Wuyang River in a long, narrow strip between the water and the hills behind. The main street runs parallel to the river for about a kilometre, lined with wooden shophouses of Ming and Qing construction — two-storey structures with carved eaves, covered ground-floor galleries, and the slight lean of buildings that have settled over centuries. Behind the main street, lanes climb the hillside to residential areas that see few tourists.
The town functions as a real settlement rather than a heritage theme park: there are hardware shops and vegetable markets alongside teahouses and souvenir stalls. The best time to explore on foot is the early morning, when the night-market detritus is being cleaned up and the regular market is just opening, or the late evening, when the day-trippers have left and the riverside restaurants fill with locals. At night the walls and cliff face above are lit, and the reflections in the river make Zhenyuan look like a place from a landscape painting — which, in various forms, it has been for several hundred years.