The room is on the first floor of a timber courtyard house on 柳子街 Liǔzi Jiē, and the walls are thin enough that you can hear the river doing its work all night — not loud, more like a large animal breathing a few metres away. The bed is a hard platform with a mattress on it, the window opens onto an internal courtyard with a stone tank of goldfish, and at about six in the morning somebody starts sweeping the street outside with a bamboo broom and you will not be annoyed, because the sound goes with the place. A double room in one of the restored wooden guesthouses of 零陵古城 Línglíng Gǔchéng runs ¥180–380 a night, breakfast usually included and usually a bowl of rice noodles.
零陵 Línglíng is the old half of Yongzhou, and the street you want to be on is 柳子街 Liǔzi Jiē, a narrow lane of single-storey timber shopfronts that runs along the 愚溪 Yúxī, the Fool’s Stream, from 柳子庙 Liǔzi Miào — the shrine to the exiled poet 柳宗元 Liǔ Zōngyuán — down to the river. The lane has been tidied up and lit and given a tourist-information sign, but it has not been rebuilt into a set: people live here, there are still barbers and hardware shops between the tea rooms, and the stone underfoot is worn smooth by a thousand years of feet rather than by a paving contractor.
The guesthouses are conversions. Most are old 窨子屋 yìnziwū — the deep, narrow courtyard houses of the Xiang River towns, with a light well in the middle, high brick side walls and a timber frame inside — that have been turned into four to eight rooms. What that means practically: rooms facing the courtyard are quiet but dark, rooms on the street have light and noise, and rooms at the back look at a wall. Ask which one you are getting.
What You Are Paying For
Price. ¥180–380 for a double, depending on whether you have a courtyard window and whether it is a weekend. The high end of that is a restored house with underfloor heating, which you will want in winter — the old buildings are cold in a way that Hainan and Guangdong are not, and January here drops to freezing at night.
Address. 柳子街 Liǔzi Jiē, 零陵区 Línglíng Qū, 永州市 Yǒngzhōushì. Most of the guesthouses are within a hundred metres of 柳子庙 Liǔzi Miào; if a place tells you it is “in the ancient town” and gives you a location two kilometres away, it means 零陵 generally, not the street.
Rooms. Four to eight, always. Some have private bathrooms squeezed into what was a storage alcove; a few of the cheaper ones share. Ask, because the photographs will not tell you.
Getting there. 永州站 Yǒngzhōu Zhàn is the high-speed station, about 25 minutes and ¥25–35 by taxi from 柳子街 Liǔzi Jiē. The older 永州站 in the city centre is closer but has fewer services. There is no metro; buses run but slowly.
What the Locals Know
Stay two nights, not one. The point of Lingling is the early morning and the late evening, when the tour groups are gone and the street belongs to the people who live on it. One night gets you neither.
Eat breakfast on the street. The noodle shops along 柳子街 Liǔzi Jiē and the lanes behind it open at six and close when the pot is empty. A bowl of 米粉 mǐfěn is ¥8–12 and better than anything in the hotels.
Walk to 蘋岛 Píngdǎo at dusk. The island where the Xiao and Xiang meet, a ten-minute walk from the old town, is where the landscape that 柳宗元 Liǔ Zōngyuán wrote about actually looks like itself. Go when the light is low and the water is flat.
Bring cash for the small places. Not everything on the lane takes a phone.
Where to Stay
Book through a Chinese platform rather than an international one; many of these houses have no English listing and no English-speaking staff, and a phone call in the afternoon is how they hold a room. If you want the courtyard, ask for 院子房 yuànzi fáng; if you want quiet, ask for 后院 hòuyuàn. In spring and autumn the town fills at weekends and the good four-room places go first, so reserve a few days out.
flowcloud would say that sleeping in a courtyard house on the stream a man was exiled to twelve hundred years ago is a strange kind of luxury — that the room is small and the walls are thin and the whole thing costs less than a night in a city hotel, and that this is exactly the right ratio.
Where to stay: 柳子街 (Liǔzi Jiē), 零陵古城 (Línglíng Gǔchéng), 零陵区 (Línglíng Qū), 永州市 (Yǒngzhōushì), 湖南 (Húnán). Timber courtyard guesthouses ¥180–380 per double with breakfast. Reach it from 永州站 (Yǒngzhōu Zhàn) by taxi, 25 minutes, ¥25–35. Ask for a courtyard or back-courtyard room, stay at least two nights, and eat breakfast on the lane.