Anji Travel Guide

Introduction

Zhejiang Province, 58km (36 miles) SE of Hangzhou

Tourism has exploded in and around Anji during the last 5 years, partly due to the lip service that China is currently paying to the newly introduced concept of ecotourism, but mainly due to the fact that a handful of scenes from the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were filmed here in 1999.

There are some who contend that the vast swaths of bamboo have only appeared in the last few decades and that before the mass deforestation of the Great Leap Forward, this area was mainly mountainous stretches of majestic pine forest. It is clear that the influence of foreign missionaries on Moganshan had a significant impact, as many of the mountain smallholders still hold quasi-Christian beliefs, and this might even stretch back as far as the Taiping Rebellion, when heavenly troops used these inaccessible areas as a stronghold against the imperial forces. More recently, the tortuous mountain passes provided safe havens for refugees...