Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 22

This week we took a 1-day "tour" to one of the "water towns" that are outside of Shanghai. When we were at the Expat show a few months back, we picked up a book called "40 Weekend Breaks from Shanghai" and this is one of the several water towns that they have a tour of. We picked up a sightseeing bus at the Shanghai Sightseeing Bus Center that is near the Shanghai Stadium. While they say it is a "sightseeing" center, they seem to assume that they are all Chinese-speaking sight-seers! They spoke a tiny bit of English but it was pretty easy since we showed them the name in the book (which was in Chinese also) and they sold us a ticket. We then just kept showing the tickets to the people around and smiling, and they nicely pointed us to the right bus. We were the only non-asians on the bus, and as we got off the bus, the driver says "here, 3 o'clocK" .. and we are like, great! we know how to get back to Shanghai!

We went to Zhujiajiao, which they say is located in a suburb of Shanghai, although the bus trip took around an hour. Zhujiajiao, which means "Zhu Family Settlement" is an ancient water town with a history of more than 1700 years. It has a couple different nicknames, including "Pearl Stream" and "Shanghai's Venice". It is the best-preserved among the four ancient towns in Shanghai. Unique old bridges across bubbling streams, small rivers shaded by willow trees, and houses with courtyards attached all transport people who have been living amidst the bustle and hustle of the modern big city to a brand-new world full of antiquity, leisure and tranquility. The population of the town is about 60,000 and it was an important trading hub. Some of the buildings date back to the Ming and Qing dynasties, and as you can imagine from the name "water town", it is a town with canals all over in it. Traditionally, everything (goods, people, animals) were ferried on the small canals from house to house. There are 3 ancient stone bridges total in the town.

We came into the town through one of the 2 main entrances, this one along Xijing Street. As you can see from the pictures, it runs along one of the many canals.





This is Yongquan Bridge, which was the first one that we came across.

There are these little gondola-style boats all over the canals and they give tours of the various canals. There are points to get on and off of them all over.

And, yet another case of puppy-envy, here was this little ball of fur snoozing away!

We're not sure what these are (I need to ask some of the guys at work), but in quite a few of the "food" stalls, they had the foods (we think meats) packaged up and hanging from the ceiling, and they were connected to these things that spun them around. I know it isn't all that easy to see, but they just spun and spun and spun ... no clue really what they were or why they were spinning, but we saw these all over the place.



And of course, if you want to buy a turtle, or a chicken, you could get one just on the street.



There are 36 different stone bridges in town, and here is Susan at one of them. I have a whole bunch of pictures here that are just of the town, the architecture, and the buildings along the canals.









There are also tons of market stalls along the narrow alleys, that you can see here.





This is the Yuanjin Buddist Temple, also called the Niang Niang Temple. Originally built in 1341, the temple used to house the statue of Chenzhou Holy mother. There is a 3-story pavillion called the the Qinghua Pavillion (with Susan in front of). On the ground floor, there is a statue of Guanin with multiple hands, and the 2nd floor has a bell that you can ring to bring you luck. We didn't do the bell ourselves, but the family that was there with us took their shots at the bell.















This is one of the unique bridges in the town, the Veranda Bridge, because it is made of wood instead of stone.

This is the City God Temple. It was built in 1769 and was moved to the town after it was built. It is the main place of worship for Taoists.

This was a really good relief made out of stone.

This is the Great Qing Post Office. It was founded in 1903 during the Qing Emperor Tongzhi's reign and was one of the 13 major post offices in Shanghai. Inside there was a multi-floor display that explained the postal service throughout time.



And next was the Tong Tian He Chinese pharmacy, which is over 100 years old. It seemed like it was actually a working Chinese pharmacy!

Then we took a gondola ride and so we took a few pictures from the boat. The large bridge that is in the pictures is the FangSheng Bridge, which was built in 1571 and is the most picturesque bridge in the town. It is 72 meetings long linking two sides of the canal and is the largest and most famous bridge in town. There are 5 arches and an engraved Dragon Gate Stone tablet which has 8 dragons circling a pearl.











The last thing we did before heading back to Shanghai was to go through the Kezhi Garden. Built in 1912, it took 15 years and 300,000 taels of silver to build the garden. The architecture combines Chinese and Western styles, which is quite rare in China. The garden is divided into two parts, the Ke Garden (which means "study" in Chinese) and the Zhi Garden (which means "farming").