The water village of Zhujiajiao in Shanghai

During my days in Shanghai I decided to take a trip out of town. My destination was Zhujiajiao, a town on the water. This is the closest village to Shanghai which is in fact 47km from it and it is like a small village that sits on the water with its canals and ancient bridges of the Ming period. There are several ways to reach the village such as trains, buses and taxis. I initially wanted to use the bus but I then went to the Shanghai Stadium subway station where I took the train. The ticket includes the bus entrance to the town and many of the same attractions including the temples, gardens, a gallery, a museum and a boat ride. However, due to rain delays and various circumstances I saw myself going to opt for a taxi. Of course even this did not prove easy because I did not have the city’s name written in Mandarin Chinese so then I had to find a taxi driver who was able to decipher destination written with Western images. After questioning without any result I found one taxi driver who wanted to further investigate the message and after 5 minutes ruled with a hand gesture that invited us to go up, but with an expression not so sure that he knew where we wanted to go. Obviously we got aware that we had a 50% chance of ending up in a random place but at that point it did not matter, we wanted to take a ride in the car because of the rain.

Zhujiajiao Cannals

Zhujiajiao Structure

Incredibly, after a half hour journey I see a sign written in Western language with the name of the city. We paid the taxi a little more than € 20 in for a more than half an hour trip. To access the city paying for a ticket is required, from 3 to € 8 depending on how many attractions you want to visit in the village. The typical village is very pretty, super structured and packed with tourists.

Zhujiajiao View

Zhujiajiao Cannals beauty

In the markets of food there was an incredible smell that I had been wondering what kind of food it came from.. As we walked around more and more it started to rain and my feet tucked in my boots that apparently do not hold the water, drenched well. We visited the Temple under the flood and then we ran into a really nice bar a little bit far from the center to drink tea. We also had a boat ride of the channels included in the ticket but it would be tantamount to jump in the river because of the rain so we stayed. The places to visit are enough to spend the day and leave time to stop for lunch for over an hour.

Zhujiajiao Temple

Zhujiajiao Sunset Rainfall

At Zhujiajiao there are touristy streets with pubs, bars and art shops, attractions and some streets that are primarily residential. At the northern edge of the ancient district in Xijing Street, there is a garden called Kezhi Yuan which means learning to plant. There is a main room, a garden and an artificial hill. There is also a five story building. The area of ​​the garden dates back to 1912. There are some old buildings in this area. On Xihu Street there is a post office of the Qing Dynasty. Of the 36 bridges, one of the main attractions is the Bridge Fangsheng with a length of about 70 meters. The bridge rests on five strings and is 5.8 meters high. It was built in 1812. Is said to be the largest stone bridge in Shanghai. One of the ways to get to see the bridges is to advance by boat. There are small boats that have seats for five or six people which are strong and slender. The ticket costs about 80RMB or € 10.

Zhujiajiao Bridge

Zhujiajiao photos: catic-teder, globalcitizen01, charmelle photo, Edgar Castillo, davidanthonysiddall, Will Clayton, Neil Noland.