Hefei First Time: The President's Landing City, Done in a Day or Two

The president landed before dawn

The plane touched down at Hefei Xinqiao International Airport while the city was still dark. It was 27 October 2026, and the passenger was Frank-Walter Steinmeier, president of Germany, beginning a state visit to China — not in Beijing, but here, in the capital of Anhui. The reason sat across town in a research campus most travellers could not find on a map: the Volkswagen Group China Technology Company, the largest research and development centre Volkswagen runs anywhere outside Germany, where engineers build electric cars for the Chinese market. Steinmeier toured it that morning and rode in a smart EV developed in China — the product of a city that now exports ideas toward Europe, not just components. A provincial capital that foreign itineraries usually spell as a transfer had opened a head of state's week.

Visitors without a motorcade get a different but related city. Hefei has been a junction since its name meant the meeting of two Fei rivers, and the modern version is a high-speed-rail crossroads on the corridor toward Nanjing and Shanghai, and the natural springboard for Huangshan and the white-walled Huizhou villages beyond it. But the old core — the Luyang streets the city grew from — holds a compact first day that costs almost nothing: the mansion of Li Hongzhang, the Hefei-born statesman who built China's first modern army and navy; the memorial park of Bao Zheng, the Song-dynasty judge whose name still means an honest official; a park on the field where a Three Kingdoms battle was won against absurd odds; the provincial museum; and, across town, an entire airport converted into a park, its runway now a lawn. One day covers the old city in roughly the president's order. A second settles the question every Hefei traveller eventually faces: stay another night, or take the fast train south to the mountains.

A first Hefei day, in running order

Do it like a local

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How to run Hefei, step by step

1. Step 1 — Decide what Hefei is in this trip

   Hefei works in three roles, and the day changes with the choice. As a landing, it is the soft first night in Anhui before Huangshan: arrive, sleep near the old core, see the mansion in the morning and let the province introduce itself. As a destination, it earns one full structured day — old city in the morning, museum after lunch, the runway park at golden hour — plus a second, slower day if Sanhe Ancient Town or a long museum session appeals. As a gateway, it is a machine to be used precisely: Hefei South station, an early train, and the mountains by mid-morning. What does not work is the shrug version — 'we are passing through, maybe we will look around' — because Hefei's sights split between the Luyang old core and the south side of the city, and an unplanned day dissolves into taxi rides between them.

2. Step 2 — Arrive at the right door, and sleep in the old core

   There are two front doors. By air, Hefei Xinqiao International Airport is where the president landed; it is also where the city's newest international connections arrive — HK Express sells direct Hong Kong flights from here, a sign of where Hefei thinks it is going. By rail, Hefei South is the hub that matters: high-speed trains fan out toward Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Huangshan, and the metro runs from its basement into the city. The trap is the older Hefei Station, whose name sounds like the main event and is not — check the station on the ticket before you travel, not on the platform. However you arrive, sleep in or near Luyang, around Huaihe Road and Sipailou: the mansion, the battlefield park and the old shopping streets are walkable from there, and the evening city is the one locals use.

3. Step 3 — Open the day at the statesman's mansion, at 09:00

   Li Hongzhang is the reason Hefei has a history section in the world's newspapers at all. Born here in 1823, he raised the Huai Army from Anhui recruits, built the Beiyang Fleet, ran much of the Qing empire's foreign policy for three decades and signed the treaties that ended its wars — admired abroad as an 'Oriental Bismarck', argued about at home ever since. His family's compound on Huaihe Road, once so large the street was nicknamed after it, is now the city's anchor sight: grey-brick courtyards, reception halls and exhibitions on the man and his era, opening straight off the pedestrian street. Entry is free; arrive at the 09:00 opening for the quiet hour, and remember the two conditions that govern everything about this sight — it closes on Mondays, and in autumn 2026 it is shut for roof repairs, which Step 8 and the limits section deal with.

4. Step 4 — Walk the honest judge's park late in the morning

   From the mansion, the day's second story is a short hop south: Bao Park, the memorial complex for Bao Zheng. If Li Hongzhang is Hefei's complicated son, Bao is its conscience — a Song-dynasty official from the area whose refusal to bend made 'Lord Bao' the Chinese shorthand for incorruptible justice, a byword still used a thousand years later. The park spreads his temple, tomb and the Qingfeng Pavilion around a lake in the Baohe district, and it is the old city's green lung as much as a monument: morning exercisers, calligraphy water-writers, families. Entry is now free with real-name booking, and Metro Line 1's Bao Park station puts it on the same line as much of the rest of the day. Give it an unhurried hour; this is atmosphere, not a checklist.

5. Step 5 — Lunch on Huaihe Road, then the province in one building

   Huaihe Road pedestrian street is the old city's living room and its canteen: eat there, where the mansion crowd itself eats. The order with local credentials is Luzhou roast duck — Luzhou is Hefei's old name, and the duck is its signature plate — alongside the Anhui cooking the street's kitchens turn out for residents rather than tourists. Then take the afternoon indoors at Anhui Museum, the provincial museum, free to enter. Its value on this itinerary is strategic: Anhui is two provinces in one, the Jianghuai north around Hefei and the Huizhou south of white walls and horse-head gables, and an hour with the museum's Anhui story is what makes Hongcun and the southern villages legible tomorrow instead of merely pretty. Keep it to an hour unless museums are your main event — the day's best light is still coming.

6. Step 6 — Spend golden hour walking down a runway

   Every city has a park; Hefei has an airport that became one. Luogang Park occupies the whole of the former Luogang Airport, the field Xinqiao replaced, and its centrepiece is exactly what an airport leaves behind: the runway, kept as a lawn axis more than three kilometres long — the Dream Lawn — with the old terminal reborn as a city-construction exhibition hall holding an aviation museum. Steinmeier's hosts brought him here on the state visit, and the logic works for anyone: it is the city's argument about itself, told in grass and concrete. Go late in the day, when the heat drops and the lawn fills with kite-flyers and picnic blankets; Hefei summers are hot and humid, and a three-kilometre lawn at noon is a punishment, not a sight. Metro Line 1 to Luogang station or Line 5 to Shengda station frame the visit at both ends.

7. Step 7 — Finish at the battlefield, which is now just a park

   Back in the old core, end the day at Xiaoyaojin Park, a few minutes from Huaihe Road. Nothing about the lawns, the lake and the evening dancers announces that this is Xiaoyao Ford, where in the Three Kingdoms wars the Wei general Zhang Liao made the stand that Chinese storytelling has celebrated for eighteen centuries — the battle that made 'Xiaoyaojin' a name every schoolchild meets. That is the point of the place: Hefei's deepest history is not behind glass but under the feet of people walking their dogs. Read the memorial corner, find Zhang Liao's statue, then let the park be what it is at dusk — the neighbourhood outdoors — and drift back to Huaihe Road for dinner under the lights, in the street Li Hongzhang's family once half-owned.

8. Step 8 — Day two: take the mountain decision early and properly

   The strongest second day starts at Hefei South before breakfast. The fast trains south to Huangshan North take roughly an hour, and from the station, buses run on to Hongcun — the Huizhou village of moon-pond lanes that the Anhui Museum just taught you to read — and to Tangkou, the town at the Yellow Mountain trailheads. Book the train when you book the trip, not the night before, and treat the mountain as the main event it is: this guide's Hefei day is the overture, not a substitute. If the mountains are not in this trip, the honest alternatives are a slow second day — Sanhe Ancient Town, the water town on Hefei's edge that airline guides pair with the city — or a return to the museum and the parks at local pace. And if the mansion's renovation closure covers your dates, run this day in reverse: parks and museum first, and let the gateway role carry the visit.

Where a Hefei trip goes wrong

Sources and status

Prices, schedules and booking channels change. Recheck the details that matter before you travel.

• Wikipedia — HefeiReference ~City overview and history: the Former Residence of Li Hongzhang among its sites of interest, and the Battle of Xiaoyao Ford in its history — checked 2026-10-31
• Wikipedia — Li HongzhangReference ~Biography of the Hefei-born statesman — Huai Army, Beiyang Fleet and the Self-Strengthening Movement — checked 2026-10-31
• Hefei Bendibao — 2026 Li Hongzhang Former Residence opening hoursVerifiedOpening hours 09:00–17:00, last entry 16:30, closed Mondays and Chinese New Year's Eve, free entry, Metro Line 2 Sipailou station access — checked 2026-10-31
• Hefei Bendibao — 2026 Li Hongzhang Former Residence ticket bookingVerifiedPeak-summer weekend real-name booking in timed slots; Tuesday-to-Friday walk-in entry — checked 2026-10-31