The Wuzhen Tourists Never See

The Wuzhen Tourists Never See

A plate of 西红柿炒鸡蛋 (the old-fashioned tomatoes and eggs Chinese dish) in Wuzhen might cost 32 RMB. If the restaurant is packed and tourists are lining up outside, the owner still cannot wake up the next morning and decide to charge 42.

If ingredient costs rise and the owner thinks the price should change, they have to explain why. The request can go through Wuzhen’s homestay management department, where staff look at costs and market conditions before it moves further up for approval.

I definitely did not expect tomato and eggs to become one of the most useful examples from my interview.
I was speaking with a manager who has worked on Wuzhen’s tourism operations for years, and the longer we talked, the more I realized how much of the town I had never really seen. I have been to Wuzhen many times, including during the Theatre Festival, when the streets can get so crowded that walking a few hundred metres takes forever. I knew about the hotels, the traditional crafts, the Internet Conference and the newer brands that have started appearing around the scenic area.

I had never thought much about who decides how expensive a plate of food can be, why two guesthouses seem different but operate under the same management system, or how Wuzhen decides which businesses are even allowed onto its streets.

​

A historical town where your mattress remembers you

One of the things I wanted to understand was how Wuzhen dealt with modernization without losing the atmosphere people come to see.

This becomes especially obvious inside the hotels.

From outside, many buildings still have the white walls, dark roof tiles and wooden structures associated with Jiangnan water towns. Some rooms sit directly beside old canals. Once you walk inside, however, you can have WiFi, underfloor heating, modern bathrooms and, in some newer hotels, intelligent mattresses that remember personal settings and can adjust their temperature and firmness.

The contrast sounds strange until you think about what tourists actually want.

People come to Wuzhen hoping to experience the feeling of an older Chinese water town. They still expect hot showers, heating, clean bathrooms and a stable internet connection when they go back to their room.
The manager described this as combining traditional architecture with modern living conditions, which I think captures a central problem Wuzhen has had to solve. Preserving a town cannot mean forcing everyone inside it to live according to the standards of a century ago. Buildings can keep their historical character while their functions change.

Some structures also had to be repaired for safety. Utilities such as electricity, television and telephone lines were difficult to install in old streets that had never been designed for them.

By the time large-scale redevelopment began, another change had already happened. Many younger residents had moved elsewhere, leaving a higher proportion of older people living along the historic streets. According to the manager, this made parts of the relocation process smoother than I had expected.

Tourism development did not arrive in a completely static town. Wuzhen was already changing.

 

Before Xiaohongshu, there was Liu Ruoying

I also wanted to know how Wuzhen managed to become so famous in the first place.

Today, it is easy to imagine tourism promotion through Douyin, Xiaohongshu, influencers and viral photos. Wuzhen’s early growth came from a very different media environment.

Its marketing initially focused heavily on television advertising and travel agencies. Shanghai became an especially important market. Wuzhen also invited Liu Ruoying, often known by her nickname 奶茶, to become a spokesperson because management felt her image matched the feeling they wanted Wuzhen to have.

Then came 《似水年华》.

The television drama starring Huang Lei and Liu Ruoying was filmed in Wuzhen, with the town forming part of the story itself. Millions of viewers were therefore seeing Wuzhen through a drama instead of through a conventional tourism advertisement.

That relationship eventually became much more important.

Huang Lei developed a close relationship with Wuzhen tourism founder Chen Xianghong, and the idea of creating the Wuzhen Theatre Festival gradually emerged. The founding team also included major figures in Chinese theatre such as Meng Jinghui and Stan Lai.

I had always been curious about this. How does a water town in Zhejiang suddenly convince international theatre companies to come and perform there?

Part of the answer was the founders themselves.

They already had extensive professional relationships in theatre, so they could make artistic decisions and connect the festival with performers and productions abroad. The Wuzhen side focused more heavily on operations and execution.

By then, Wuzhen also had something many towns could not provide: enough accommodation and tourism infrastructure to turn a theatre festival into a multi-day experience. Visitors could watch performances, stay overnight and spend time in the town instead of arriving for one show and leaving.

When the festival started, Chen Xianghong apparently said that if it could continue for ten years, he would already consider that an incredible achievement.

This year will be its thirteenth edition.

Something else from this part of the conversation interested me. According to the manager, the festival originally resisted sponsorship because Chen Xianghong wanted to protect its cultural character and avoid making it overly commercial.

That became harder as the festival grew.

You can see this tension today. Wuzhen Theatre Festival still presents itself as a major cultural event, but visitors also see brand collaborations, pop-ups and commercial activity throughout the town. The question has shifted from whether commercialization exists to how much Wuzhen allows and where it draws the line.

 

Why Wuzhen does not let every shop in

I started paying attention to this because the businesses inside Wuzhen have changed noticeably over the past few years.

There are more young visitors, more temporary collaborations and more brands that would have looked out of place in the town ten years ago. During one Theatre Festival, I remember seeing cosmetics pop-ups alongside newer food and beverage brands, including chains such as Chagee.

I asked whether attracting these businesses had become part of Wuzhen’s strategy for younger tourists.

It has, but the process is much more selective than I assumed.

From the early development of Xizha, Wuzhen has followed an idea described as “一店一品”, one shop, one product. A business that wants to enter the scenic area submits its proposed shop design and also explains its products and pricing.

Management can reject the entire concept.

The rule became especially difficult to maintain in the early years because Wuzhen initially struggled to attract enough businesses. Empty shops create their own pressure. It would have been much easier to accept whoever was willing to come.

They kept the rule anyway.

Over time, this helped create a retail environment where the same product does not appear every twenty metres. There are handmade leather notebooks, craft stores, artwork and other specialized businesses mixed with newer commercial concepts.

This might sound like a small management choice, but I think it explains quite a lot about why Wuzhen feels different from some tourism areas where every street eventually becomes the same combination of milk tea, grilled snacks and souvenir shops.

Now the challenge has changed. Wuzhen has enough demand. Management has to decide how much it should adapt to younger visitors without turning the scenic area into another commercial district with historical architecture in the background.

The manager thought the next few years would probably bring significant changes, especially as travel habits and consumption patterns continue to shift toward experiences.

​

Some traditions survive because tourism gives them another purpose

Wuzhen’s commercial strategy becomes more interesting when you compare it with the traditional industries the town is trying to preserve.

Historically, Wuzhen had industries connected to alcohol and sauce production, indigo-dyed cloth, silk and weaving.

Some of those practices are still visible today.

The indigo dye workshop is probably one of the clearest examples. Traditional 蓝印花布 production has been preserved, but it has also changed function. Visitors can learn about the process, students can participate through school activities, and designers can adapt the technique into newer products.

Traditional 酒酱 production has also continued. The manager explained the old 江南 model as “前店后坊”: goods were sold from the front of the building and produced in the workshop behind it.

Silk and weaving raise a harder economic question.

Some hand processes still have no perfect modern replacement, but handmade production requires huge amounts of time. If the craft had to compete directly with machine manufacturing only through the price of the finished product, survival would become extremely difficult.

Tourism changes that calculation because the process itself now has value.

Watching someone produce something by hand can become part of a visit. Learning the technique can become a workshop. A craft can become part of Wuzhen’s cultural identity and attract people even when the object it produces could be manufactured more cheaply somewhere else.

There is still a tension here. Turning a traditional craft into an attraction changes the setting in which people practise it, and preservation can start becoming performance.

At the same time, without the tourism economy supporting these crafts, some would probably face a much harder future.

I find that trade-off more interesting than asking whether something is perfectly “authentic,” because authenticity becomes difficult to define once a town has to survive economically too.

Wuzhen looks decentralized. It really isn’t.

The accommodation system was probably the part of the interview that surprised me most.

Walking around Wuzhen, you see guesthouses, hotels, boutique properties and expensive luxury accommodation. They feel like separate businesses.

A large part of the system sits under centralized management.

Wuzhen can therefore coordinate accommodation across different price levels instead of leaving each property to compete independently.

COVID showed why this matters.

When tourist numbers collapsed, Wuzhen could concentrate demand into a smaller number of hotels and temporarily close others. As conditions improved, properties could reopen gradually. Staff could also move between parts of the wider operation.

The manager told me that the hotel system did not lay off employees during the pandemic.

That level of coordination would be almost impossible if every hotel operated completely independently.

The same system influences pricing. Wuzhen has accommodation across different market levels, from traditional guesthouses to boutique hotels and luxury properties. Management can adjust prices depending on weekends, holidays, peak seasons and lower-demand periods, while keeping enough options available at different price points.

Even sales and marketing can be coordinated across the destination.

There is a phrase used internally that I found interesting: “人人都是销售员,” everyone is a salesperson.

Sales, in this context, extends much further than someone physically selling a hotel room. Marketing, reception, pricing and the visitor experience all affect whether someone chooses Wuzhen and whether they come back.

 

 

They manage the tomatoes too

The same centralized approach goes all the way down to food.

​

Wuzhen’s homestays have their own management department. Staff inspect rooms and kitchens, check food safety and monitor how ingredients are stored.

Products have to be labelled with information such as when they were purchased. Different ingredients have limits on how long they can remain in the kitchen. Safety checks can include something as specific as whether gas valves have been properly closed.

The manager also told me that Wuzhen does not allow pre-prepared dishes in its homestay kitchens.
Then we got onto the tomato and egg example.

Recipes can be standardized down to the quantity of ingredients. Prices also follow a controlled system. If one homestay has a line outside because its tomato and egg dish is popular, the owner cannot immediately increase the price from 32 to 42 RMB.

The owner can argue that ingredient prices have risen and margins have become too small. Management can investigate those costs and decide whether an adjustment makes sense.

I initially found the level of control almost funny.

Then it made sense.

A tourist who has a terrible dinner in one guesthouse probably will not go home saying, “I had a bad experience with one independently operated kitchen located inside Wuzhen.”

They will say, “The food in Wuzhen was bad.”

Individual businesses therefore create a collective reputation, which gives management a strong incentive to regulate them.

The same applies to aggressive selling. Businesses cannot stand on the old streets pulling visitors into their stores.

One unpleasant interaction can become part of someone’s impression of the entire town.

 

One loose stone can reach senior management
Service standards are managed with the same intensity.

Visitors can scan feedback codes to report problems, and employees can also flag issues they notice in other departments. According to the manager, hundreds of pieces of guest feedback can move upward every week, and senior managers regularly review them.

The examples she remembered were incredibly specific.

A bathroom did not have enough hot water. A stone slab on one of the streets had become uneven. Someone complained about a service interaction.

These can all enter the same feedback system.

Depending on the nature of a complaint, employees or departments can face penalties. The response is not identical in every case because some complaints are subjective, and management considers the circumstances before deciding how to handle them.

The broader idea is to identify how the same problem can be prevented the next time.

It also explains some of the pressure employees work under.

Wuzhen has spent years building a reputation around things visitors may barely notice when everything goes well: clean streets, clean hotel rooms, safe food and responsive service.

Once people expect those standards, maintaining them becomes harder.

Nobody goes home amazed because their bedsheets were clean.

People definitely remember when they were not.

 

Wuzhen was doing “smart tourism” before the term became fashionable

Technology is another area where the old-town image can hide how modern the management system is.
Wuzhen adopted widespread WiFi and digital management systems relatively early. The World Internet Conference later accelerated this side of its development and gave the town a new role outside conventional tourism.

After Wuzhen became the permanent host, a major international convention centre was developed. The venue now attracts corporate meetings, product launches, annual gatherings and industry events, including events held by major companies.

This created an entirely different visitor economy around the town.

Technology also helps manage ordinary tourists.

The scenic area uses facial recognition or high-definition camera systems at entrances and major routes to monitor visitor numbers. Management tracks daily capacity and instantaneous capacity, meaning how many people are inside at the same time.

This became especially interesting to me because I had experienced the Theatre Festival when Wuzhen felt completely packed.

According to the manager, even during those periods the town remained below its official carrying capacity. The problem was concentration. Huge numbers of people were moving through the same parts of the scenic area at similar times.

Wuzhen responds by creating diversion plans. At the entrance, visitors can be directed toward different northern and southern routes, and management can change flows through particular access points when crowd levels rise.
Price can also influence crowd levels.

Weekend pricing may be higher than weekday pricing, partly encouraging visitors with flexible schedules to choose quieter days.

I had always seen price differences as basic tourism economics. Here, they also act as a crowd-control mechanism.

 

AI has entered Wuzhen, although people still matter

I also asked about AI because Wuzhen seems like an obvious place to experiment with it, especially given its connection with the World Internet Conference.

Some automation is already common.

There are self-service ticket machines and check-in machines. Automated delivery to hotel rooms has become more mature, and some enquiry services already use AI.

Full replacement of human service remains difficult because Wuzhen is operationally messy in a way a normal single hotel is not.

A visitor may be staying overnight or visiting for the day. Someone might leave the scenic area and need to re-enter. Another person may have a hotel booking connected to a particular ticket type. Different areas have different access conditions.

Once you add all those exceptions together, a machine can struggle.

The manager said AI can handle some parts of the process now, but people still need to deal with many of the complicated cases.

I actually like this example because it cuts through a lot of abstract discussion about AI replacing service workers. In Wuzhen, the question is much more practical: which exact task can a machine handle reliably today, and where does a confused tourist still need a person?

 

Does all this tourism actually help people outside the gate?

Near the end of the interview, I brought up something a teacher had once noticed.

Outside the main scenic area, some streets could look surprisingly quiet on a weekday. He wondered whether businesses outside the ticketed zone were really benefiting from Wuzhen’s tourism boom.

I wanted to ask because successful tourism statistics can hide uneven effects.

The manager could not give me a complete economic breakdown, but she gave me two useful pieces of information.

Before COVID, Wuzhen could receive around nine to ten million visitors in a year. Recent daily averages are still commonly somewhere between ten and twenty thousand visitors, depending on the period.

Inside the scenic area, Wuzhen has roughly five thousand beds.

There is obviously a gap.

Many visitors therefore stay, eat or spend money elsewhere in the wider town. The manager also remembered Chen Xianghong referring publicly to local residents’ bank deposits rising in the years before COVID, which he used as an indicator of wider economic improvement.

I would still be careful about using that as proof that every resident benefited equally. A rising town-level number can hide businesses that struggle and households that gain much more than others.
The basic logic, however, makes sense. A destination receiving millions of visitors creates demand far beyond the businesses located inside its ticket gates.

 

Wuzhen was built much more gradually than I thought

One last detail changed how I pictured Wuzhen’s development.

I had assumed many of the hotels and facilities had been planned and built as part of one enormous initial tourism project.

They came gradually.

The manager recalled an initial investment of around RMB 1 billion, with China Youth Travel Service involved as the major corporate investor. After the early development, many later projects were financed through revenue generated by the destination itself.

The earliest accommodation included places such as Tong’an Inn and the homestay system. Other hotels came years later, with new properties sometimes added after gaps of five years or more.

In other words, tourism revenue helped finance the next stage of tourism development.

This explains how Wuzhen could keep changing without rebuilding everything at once.

The Wuzhen I visited when I was younger, the Wuzhen I saw during the last Theatre Festival and the Wuzhen that visitors will see several years from now are probably going to be meaningfully different places.
The manager seemed quite certain about that last part.

Management is already thinking about younger travellers, changing consumption habits, experience-based tourism and new ways to bring traditional culture into the scenic area. At the same time, Wuzhen still has to protect the things that make people choose it in the first place.

After our conversation, I started looking at the town differently.

A shopfront made me wonder who approved it. A restaurant menu made me think about how the price was decided. A crowded street made me notice where people were being redirected. Even the traditional buildings felt different once I knew how much modern infrastructure had been hidden inside them.

Wuzhen is often praised for preserving the appearance of an old water town.

I think the more interesting story is how much work goes into deciding exactly how much it should change.