Zhouzhuang - Venice in China

Trip Start Aug 20, 2004
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Trip End Aug 28, 2005


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Monday, July 11, 2005

Raining! It's a bit difficult to tour the town on bicycle and visit the many gardens when it's pouring rain!! So after lunch we decided to go to Zhouzhuang, a small riverside village known as the "Venice of China" for it's numerous and crisscrossing canals. It's a very small place so we figure we can stand the rain for an hour or so and get to do something today. We catch the bus but have to wait until 2 pm for it to leave and when we arrive to the village at 3:30, the bus driver tells us we should just wait and take the bus back as we don't have enough time to look around and catch the last bus to Suzhou at 5 pm! We're like, "we'll make it back man"! So we rush off and take a pedicab to the main village gate, where he tries to tell us that the price he said was per person, not per ride - I tell him in Chinese that he's foolish and we walk away! The entrance fee is very high for China, but we came all this way and are already in the rain so we pay it and then power-walk our way around the cobbled-stone streets. The town is pretty, despite all the souvenir stalls, and is known as a "water town" because of all the bisecting canals and bridges. It's over 900 years old and is one of the last authentic old towns of China. In the canals are gondola-type boats in which you can take a cruise through the canals, which we didn't do because of time constraints, but they did make for some nice photos. The stone bridges were particularly beautiful and created the whole "reflecting circle" appearance on the shimmering waters of the canals. We were doing well on time so we stopped in one of the old residence halls, which had 7 courtyards and over 70 rooms and gives you an image of what life was like for the rich village families long ago. The whole town was a nice place to visit and on a good weather day when you could relax and stroll around it would be quite pleasant. We made it back on time and caught our bus and will hope for better weather tomorrow to visit all of the gardens around Suzhou.
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