Zhouzhuang

We saw a dab of ancient China today! I had been a bit disappointed to miss all the old cities, so our guide took us on a trip outside of Shanghai to a nine hundred year old 'watery town', Zhouzhuang. It has become a tourist attraction, but people still live in the back of the shops. It is exactly the way the city is described in the book 'Young Fu of the Upper Yangze.' The rich men's houses have been turned into museums. The narrow streets are lined with a few crafting shops, many restaurants, and countless trinket shops. The families live in the rooms behind the shops. The front of the buildings face stone streets and the back of the buildings face canals. Each one has little steps down to the water where the boats are tied and the laundry is washed. Our sweet guide is a former history teacher who told us everything about everything. It was like touring with Aunt Kathleen. She wouldn't let us make purchases or eat there, though. (Savor said that we would find better deals in GZ. We didn't, and we wish we had bought a few things from the black smith or basket weaver or bone carver.)

When we left, our driver took us to the neatest restaurant just on the outskirts of Shanghai. The restaurant is a series of a dozen or so microscopic, A-frame duplexes along a lake. Each house is a private dining room. There are chickens running loose in the parking lot and hammocks strung between the trees. The four of us shared freshly caught shrimp, a freshly killed chicken, whole lotus seeds, steamed bok choy, sticky fried rice, a pot of green tea, and a bottle of Pepsi. We spent less than at a fast food back home. The semi-outdoor bathroom consisted of a few stalls built over a narrow, sloped, wooden trench without running water. (This turned out to be our favorite restaurant in China.)