Xitang

Xitang is an ancient river town 1hour bus ride away from Shanghai.

It is well known because Mission Impossible 3 was filmed here. Remember the scene where Tom Cruise was running along the river?

Yeah, they were proud of it that they put up pictures of Tom Cruise in most of the attractions in the town.

In the morning we took a 1 hour bus ride from Shanghai North Bus Station for 32rmb to arrive somewhere near the town.

Entrance fee was originally 100rmb, but you could get a lot of discounts from external vendors like YHA (youth hostel association) in Xitang.
We got ours for 60rmb from one of the hostels.

In a nutshell, the place was very beautiful and well preserved.

There are a lot of places to eat, you can use dianping app to see how the restaurants are rated.

One of the highly popular cafe in the town is the Postcard cafe called 猫的天空之城 where you could purchase all kinds of postcards and get them to keep it to whichever date and they will send it to you on that date. its pretty cool, its like receiving a postcard from the past.

I had a cheesecake pudding and their signature milk tea for 40rmb. just average, nothing special.

Most of the shops in the ancient town were selling the same things, mostly food.
But the famous snacks are the ones opposite the postcard cafe, as you notice with queues.

It takes an avereage of 5 hours to check the whole place out (including eating).

Most people would recommend staying a night there for bar-hopping but I didn't have time to stay, perhaps another time then.