A Water Town, Indeed

Before classes started, Krystal and I thought we'd take advantage of the free time to explore a bit in the area outside of Shanghai. As Shanghai is right on the coast at the mouth of the Yellow River, a lot of towns and cities in the area are big on canals. Some of the smaller towns that have managed to keep their old buildings intact have started calling themselves "water towns" and playing up the historical aspect to rake in the tourism money. There are quite a few of them, but our guidebooks and the people I spoke to all recommended Suzhou or Zhouzhuang. Suzhou is a proper city (whereas Zhouzhuang is more of a village) and has been popular for longer, earning the nickname "The Venice of China." Zhouzhuang's boom has been more recent, as it was pronounced a UNESCO "Internation Heritage Site" (whatever that means) in 1998. We settled on Zhouzhuang, hoping the crowds would be a bit less dense.

The day started off well, as we dragged ourselves out of bed at 5:30am to see a lovely, wet, gray day dawning. At 6:00am or so, we left our dorm in the northern suburbs of town, took the bus downtown, walked around and realized the metro hadn't opened, took a cab to a bus station at the southern suburbs, and bought our tickets for the 8:30am bus. By the time the bus arrived in Zhouzhuang at 10:00am or so, packed full of Chinese tourists and us two foreigners, it was absolutely pouring down rain. I bought the first umbrella I could find, which of course managed to break two minutes later and leave a rusty metal spoke hanging menagingly in my face and tangling up in my hair.

We soon realized that one of the favorite pastimes in this town was to assault tourists as they walked by the small shops and stands that lined the roads. Even more unfortunately, apparently the same person had taught all of the locals the 10 words of English that they all knew; it seems that this person also thought it would be amusing to tell them to end all of their words in -y. All day long we were attacked by people commanding us to "looky, looky" or "have a lunchy" or buy something from them for "cheapy, cheapy." After five minutes, we escaped the rain and the store-owners by ducking inside the first restaurant whose owners weren't commanding us to have a lunchy. It turned out to be our best find of the day. The first floor was a small shop with some chinese pastries and knick-knacks. The restaurant was on the second floor and looked out on the cobblestone streets and people rushing by under umbrellas below. For two dollars each we had a hot, tasty meal (with vegetables(!) - a rarity around these parts apparently) and a place to sit unmolested for an hour.

After having that time to catch our breath, we ventured back out onto the streets. The town actually was really pretty when vendors weren't grabbing my arm. Apparently about 60% of the buildings were built at least five or six hundred years ago, and the cobblestone streets and stone bridges across the central canal made for a pretty quaint atmosphere. One of the highlights was the South Lake Garden at the south end of town (funnily enough). It was built by a scholar in the Jin dynasty times and had bridges weaving around over the water with little resting spots to sit and relax. Krystal and I were some of the only European or American tourists there. Apparently some people considered us another attraction as we sat in one of the little cupolas; an Indonesian family even came over to take a picture of us with their kids.

Another highlight was when we accidentally stumbled into residential areas of town. We would go from streets packed full of tour groups with megaphones and aggressive store-owners to small deserted roads that passed by houses where local people were getting haircuts, making lunch for their kids, or taking down their clotheslines because of the rain. Happy with those experiences, we ended the day on a positive note, despite the pushy salespeople and the rain. I was just happy that my semi-broken umbrella had made it through the continual downpour. Of course I had grown quite fond of it by the end of the day; I kept using it for another week until three more of the little spokes had snapped or bent completely backwards, and then I was forced to spend $2 to get a slightly more sturdy one. At 4:00pm, tired and wet but feeling accomplished at making the most of the day, we piled back on the bus at and slept all the way back home.

Pictures:

[1-Boat rides down the central canal;
2-A woman at a small stand, selling umbrellas]


[1-Two vendors, taking time out from assaulting passers-by;
2-The proprietors of the restaurant where we ate twice.]

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