Jiaxing is perfectly positioned for day trips into the canal town circuit. Wuzhen, forty minutes to the west, is the most photographed water town in Zhejiang and one of the best-preserved in China, with evening illuminations that justify staying until dark. Xitang, slightly closer to Shanghai, is somewhat less curated and on a quiet weekday morning feels closer to what these towns must have been before mass tourism.
The Qiantang River tidal bore, one of the largest in the world, occurs at Haining about thirty kilometres north of Jiaxing and can be timed to the day using tidal tables. The bore arrives as a wall of brown water moving upstream at speed, and the viewing points along the embankment draw enormous crowds on the peak bore days around the autumn equinox.
