As Yangzhou is a fairly popular city with Chinese tourists, it is likewise an easy destination to reach. The nearest airport is an hour south of Nanjing, so rule out flying, but both trains and buses make frequent stops here.
To and from Beijing, Yangzhou is an easy overnight ride, best done on a hard sleeper. The train from Beijing departs at 9:30 p.m. and reaches Yangzhou at 8:20 a.m. the next morning. From Yangzhou, the train departs just before 8 p.m. and arrives in Beijing just before 7 a.m. the next morning.
Other useful train lines that pass through Yangzhou include one heading northwest to and from Xi’an which takes about 22 hours. Another lines heads south to Guangzhou that includes a stop at Yellow Mountain (Huang Shan, 黄山) in around 27 hours. A rail line heads due west to and from Hankou (near Wuhan) in about 12 hours.
If wishing to travel by train to Shanghai, it is best to take the train from Zhenjiang, a city just across the Yangtze river from Yangzhou. Frequent trains between Zhenjiang and Shanghai take just under 3 hours to reach its destination. From Zhenjiang, there are also buses departing every 15 minutes, and the Zhenjiang bus station is only a 20 minute ride from Yangzhou. The Zhenjiang bus and train stations are side by side making for easy transfers.
Reaching Yangzhou from Nanjing is best done by bus as well. There are trains, but they are not as frequent as buses and wind up being a bigger ordeal. From Nanjing’s East Long Distance Bus Station (Dong Che Zhan, 东车站) there are very comfortable buses headed to Yangzhou about every 30 minutes, and arrive an hour later. Buses to Yangzhou also depart from Nanjing Lukou International Airport.