Sit Down, Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat

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One beautiful fall Saturday in early November, we decided to check out Zhujiajiao (which means Zhu family settlement). It’s an ancient water village (kind of like a Chinese Venice but slightly less remarkable) that was built 1700 years ago. According to our travel guide, we had to find the pink bus near People’s Square with the characters 沪朱高速快线 on it. We arrived early and went searching for the pink bus. After carefully scrutinizing the characters on the front of the bus, we realized it was the one (the only one) with a line down the street. When in China, if you’re going somewhere touristy, just look for the long line. We waited for about an hour and a half and watched 3 buses come and go. We finally boarded a bus and paid our measly 12 yuan. Believe it or not, this was only the beginning of a long journey to come. We got about a half hour outside Shanghai when the freeway became a parking lot. It was stop and go due to a car accident which turned our hour long trip into 4 hours (including standing in line).

When we finally arrived at 1:00, we were hungry and cramped from sitting in a seat obviously tailored to Chinese people which accommodated neither my torso nor Blair’s legs. We followed the crowds toward the water village and entered a narrow street filled with people (you’re probably sensing a common theme by now). This was the main street and was lined on both sides with small shops selling traditional snacks and souvenirs. But we were starving and wanted to find the restaurant we had read about on WikiTravel. We didn’t have a map of the village, so we resorted to the using the maps located intermittently on buildings along the way. After realizing we were on the opposite side of the village, we weaved back through the people on the main street, across 3 bridges to Xijing St. where the restaurant was located. With high expectations since we hadn’t seen an English restaurant yet, we walked into a rustic café and were handed a menu hand written on a big piece of cardboard. We ordered some Chinese food (you can’t go wrong with staples… dumplings and pork) and a cappuccino. The cappuccino came in a cute cup but was extremely small and the braised pork dish had about 5 pieces of pork and mounds of onions.

Filled up on dumplings, we left the restaurant and set out to find a gondola that we could ride to the other side of the village. We paid our toll, followed a man to the riverside and boarded his gondola. We each sat on one side of the gondola as the gondolier steered us with the long oar in the back (it looked like very hard labor). There were multiple ancient bridges and buildings with colorful lanterns hanging from their eaves. I tried to move to the other side of the boat so Blair & I could take a picture together, but he motioned me back to my side. What he was really trying to say was “sit down, sit down, you’re rockin’ the boat”! I loved that the Chinese gondoliers wore those pointy straw hats stereotypical of Chinese laborers.

After disembarking the gondola, we stopped along the river to take some pictures when a lady approached Blair and started fixing his shoe. A rubber piece on his tennis shoe was loose and she insisted on fixing it. We halfway crossed a bridge only to be approached by another lady trying to fix his shoe. On one end of the bridge we noticed another ridiculous way which locals were trying to make money off tourists. You could pay money to a person selling live fish inside bags filled with water only to let these fish go free in the river. Maybe something was lost in translation here!

After watching the sunset in Zhujiajiao, we headed back to the bus station to return to Shanghai. Again, we watched while 4 buses were boarded before it was our turn to claim seats. Upon returning to Shanghai, we went searching for coffee in a shopping mall near People’s Square and ended up at one of our favorite chain restaurants in Shanghai, the Coco Curry House. After a long day, we were finally satisfyingly full and took the Metro back to our apartment.

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Photos

Ancient Bridges & Buildings
of Zhujiajiao

Daxin St.
The crowded main street

Restaurants
on the main canal

Gondola
on the main canal

Zhujiajiao
from the Fangsheng bridge

Gondolier
with my favorite pointy straw hat!

Gondola
with the Yuanjin Buddhist Temple in the background

Restaurant
Cute & Rustic! Too bad the food wasn't better.

Blair & I
on one of the small bridges near Xijing St.

Watching
as the gondola is navigated down a narrow channel

Old Building
along the river

Colorful Old Building
in Zhujiajiao

Comments

[gypsy2010]

nice writing
nice writing