Fenghuang was the other end of our May trip through western Hunan. We had spent five days among the quartz pillars around Zhangjiajie, and the same itinerary put us in a town where the river is not scenery — it is the street plan.
Fenghuang is the least gear-heavy place in this series and, for that reason, the most honest test of a kit: nothing you carry here is for survival. Everything you carry here is for the hours you spend walking beside water.
The place, in facts
Fenghuang is a county in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, on the western margin of Hunan, immediately next to Guizhou (Wikipedia). The ancient town is exceptionally well preserved, with distinctive architectural remains of Ming and Qing date, and it is built around the natural flow of the Tuo River rather than against it. More than half the population belong to the Miao or Tujia minorities. The town was the centre of the unsuccessful Miao Rebellion of 1854–73, and it sits close to the Southern China Great Wall, a fortification the Ming dynasty built to hold back Miao attacks.
Two details worth knowing before you go. First, the town's name changed from Zhen'gan to Fenghuang only after 1913, and the settlement itself is generally dated to 1704 — about three centuries, not the two millennia that get quoted online. Second, and more importantly for anyone writing a travel plan: Fenghuang Ancient Town was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on 28 March 2008. It is tentative, not inscribed — a distinction most travel posts get wrong.
The writer Shen Congwen was from here, and his childhood home is one of the most visited sites in town. Flooding in July 2014 damaged the town, which tells you how much the Tuo River controls life on its banks.
Fenghuang Ancient Town camping gear: the three things that mattered
1. A light you can find in the dark. The lanes between the stilt houses are lit by lanterns, which is beautiful and useless at the edges of the pavement. Our multifunctional rechargeable LED flashlight (SG33) is the only piece of kit we used every single evening: IP44-rated for rain, adjustable from 1800 K to 5500 K with stepless dimming, with a magnetic base that sticks to a railing so both hands stay free.
2. One bag, because you are never more than a kilometre from the room. We stopped splitting the kit on this trip. Our 40 L EVA camping kitchen storage bag is foldable and handheld, and it takes the stove, the cups, the cutlery and the food in a single lift — which matters when you are carrying it up the stairs of a guesthouse rather than loading a car.
3. A cup that lives in a pocket. A 150 ml foldable aluminium cup (SG7B) weighs 58 grams and folds into its own bag. Along a river you drink constantly and buy less than you expect, so ours was refilled at every stop we passed.
From our shop: those three are what survived the week. When we travel with a car we add the folding 430 stainless steel cutlery set (SG7C) and the 450 ml stainless steel hiking cup (SG7D), which doubles as a small bowl.
What Fenghuang Ancient Town camping gear cannot fix
Fenghuang is a town, not a campsite. The tent, the three-layer mat, the chimney stove and the trolley stayed in the car, and we would carry them there again — there is nowhere in the old town to use them.
Two honest gaps in our own range, since this is a series about what we actually take: we do not sell a waterproof shell and we do not sell backpacking shoes, and both are more important here than anything on the list above. Rain moves through western Hunan fast and hard, the stone paving holds water, and a five-day trip with wet feet is a five-day trip you remember for the wrong reason.
FAQ
Is Fenghuang Ancient Town a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
No — and this is worth checking before you repeat it. Fenghuang Ancient Town was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on 28 March 2008, in the cultural category. It has not been inscribed as a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia).
Do people camp in Fenghuang?
Not in the old town. It is a preserved residential and commercial area with guesthouses and hotels; the camping on this trip happened elsewhere, around Zhangjiajie and further north.
How long do you need in Fenghuang?
Our trip gave it a share of five days. The old town is compact — the Tuo River, the stilt houses and the covered Hong Bridge are all within a walk of each other — so the constraint is weather rather than distance.
Shop the river-walk kit
Everything in the three-item list is in the Kochav store:
- Storage & Gear Transport — the 40 L bag and the kit we left in the car.
- Cooking, Dining & Hydration — the folding cup and the cutlery set.
- Camping Furniture and Shelter — the tent and the mat for the nights you do sleep out.
The rest of this series
- Best camping gear for weekend trips: what Zhangjiajie taught us
- Northern Xinjiang camping gear: what a 12-day summer loop taught us
- Jiuzhaigou camping gear: altitude, blackout nights and one-bag days
- Furong Town camping gear: a town built on a waterfall
About the authors
Axel and Hayley travel and camp together. This series comes from their own trips — the sandstone pillars of Zhangjiajie, a 12-day loop through northern Xinjiang, and the lakes of Jiuzhaigou at altitude. Here they write about the gear they pack for one night out, and what they leave behind.
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