City guide · Jiangsu
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
In Zhouzhuang you learn to slow down. You can sit by the water and simply stare at nothing; you can find a cafe over the canal, lean on the window and read; you can sit in a bookshop, or order a pot of tea and listen to pingtan. — from 'Suzhou and Zhouzhuang, a three-day route in detail'
A traveller's note in the source guide
The twin bridges in the early morning have none of the crowds the internet warns you about. They just lie quietly on the river, telling the story of however many centuries. Two old women sit on the bridge selling the shrimps they pulled out of the water. Sitting there I felt I had gone back decades. — from 'Suzhou and Zhouzhuang, a three-day route in detail'
A traveller's note in the source guide
Zhouzhuang sits on the water the way a water lily does. Lakes ring the town and canals cut through it in the shape of the Chinese character for 'well'. Where there is a canal there is a street, and where there is a street there is a bridge — the bridges made the streets and the bridges made the market. Fourteen of them survive, all different, and the whole place still reads as the pattern the south is famous for: little bridge, running water, households.
It is nine hundred years old, and it got its name by accident. In 1086 a man called Zhou Digong gave two hundred mu of land — more than thirteen hectares — to the temple of Quanfu as its endowment, and the grateful locals named the place after him. Before that it was Zhenfeng li, the fief of a Wu king's youngest son. It grew rich under the Ming and Qing on the trade of Shen Wansan, the richest man in the south, who used the Baixian river to move grain, silk and handicrafts out to the sea.
You are not coming for a checklist. You are coming for the hour before the coaches arrive and the hour after they leave. Sleep inside the town — a dorm bed costs from ¥35 — and you get the dawn, when people are washing vegetables at the water steps and the coal stoves smoke into the mist; and you get the night, when the lamp boats go out and strings and pipa carry across the black water.
It is also the easiest of the water towns to reach. Suzhou is 38 km away with a coach every 20 minutes; Shanghai is 60 km and about an hour. Pair it with Tongli, an hour on, for a two-town loop — or come for the day and be back in Shanghai for dinner.
Zhouzhuang
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
More than 60% of the houses are still Ming or Qing. There are nearly a hundred old courtyard houses, more than sixty carved brick gate towers, and fourteen surviving old bridges. Sixty per cent is the number that matters: this is a town that kept its fabric, not one that rebuilt it for tourists.
The canals run in the shape of the character for 'well'. Where there is a canal there is a street; where there is a street there is a bridge. The bridges made the streets and the bridges made the market — which is why the town reads as one organism rather than a row of houses along a river.
Working in the United States from his own photographs and memories, Chen Yifei painted 'Memory of Hometown'. That painting was the key that opened Zhouzhuang to the outside world, and the Twin Bridges became the representative work of southern bridge-building and one of the most-painted views in China. Art students work the bridge all year.
Kunqu was listed as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity on 18 May 2001. The old opera stage here was rebuilt for it and works with the Jiangsu Kunju Company year-round, with original-flavour pieces such as 'The Peony Pavilion' every weekend. Even if you do not understand Wu dialect, the rise and fall of the lines gets under your skin.
Night in Zhouzhuang is a different town. Drift past in a boat with the strings of the south playing, and the lamp boats add a dimension the daylight never has. Board at the water steps opposite Shen Hall and listen for the pipa out of the windows along the bank.
Shen Wansan hired famous cooks and called the result the Wansan banquet: seasonal, carefully sourced, correct in colour, aroma, taste and form. The centrepiece is the Wansan knuckle, simmered a full day and night and cut at the table with a bone drawn out of the joint itself.
Suggested routes
The standard day trip: the museum, the bridges, both halls, a boat, and kunqu at the end.
Arrive in the morning and come in past the Zhenfeng Ze Guo arch. Start at the Zhouzhuang Museum for the rare pieces and the thousand years of history, then stop at the Twin Bridges and linger at Chen Yifei's house to see the painting that made the town famous.
Go into Zhang Hall and cross the flagstone street, then into Shen Hall for the scale of it and the ingenuity of the horse-run gallery. After lunch cross Fu'an Bridge to the boat pier and drift the quiet water lanes; come ashore for Milou's poetry, a pot at Sanmao tea house, the traditional crafts street, Chengxu Daoist temple and Quanfu Temple. Finish on a bench at the old opera stage with a kunqu excerpt.
Stops: Zhouzhuang MuseumTwin BridgesZhang HallShen HallBoat pierQuanfu TempleOld opera stage
The route that gets you the dawn. Everything about Zhouzhuang improves once you are asleep here.
Be out at six and walk the town under the mist: locals washing at the water steps, coal stoves smoking into the fog. Sit on the wooden benches under the old opera stage the way people used to and take in a set of kunqu.
Follow the main channel to Zhang Hall, the Twin Bridges and Shen Hall. Fu'an Bridge is the only surviving three-dimensional bridge-tower structure in the south. Lunch at the Shen Hall restaurant by Fu'an Bridge — ¥70 a head, and the Wansan knuckle is the reason. Finish at Ye Chucang's house, a scholar, Nanshe poet and revolutionary.
Stops: Old opera stageTwin BridgesZhang HallShen HallFu'an BridgeYe Chucang's house
Work from the map across to Milou, then the Nanhu garden, Quanfu Temple and the South Lake itself — the water is wide enough that you cannot see across it, and a walk along the shore is the right way to end a morning.
See Shen Wansan's former home, then go back to your room. Sleep in a quiet town. The point of the second day is that you are still here after the coaches leave.
Stops: MilouQuanfu TempleSouth LakeShen Wansan's house
The two classic water towns in one loop, with a night in each.
Coach from Suzhou early. Photograph the Twin Bridges, walk Shen Hall and Zhang Hall, then the chess garden and Ye Chucang's house. Take a boat after dark and sleep in Zhouzhuang.
Stops: Twin BridgesShen HallMilouNight boat
Rise early for the Zhouzhuang dawn, then coach across to Tongli: the Retreat and Reflection Garden first, then Chongben Hall and the three bridges, and Luoxing Isle in the afternoon. Return by coach in the evening.
Stops: TongliRetreat and Reflection GardenThree BridgesLuoxing Isle
Sights
The picture
Two bridges built as one: Shide, an arched stone bridge, and Yong'an, a beam bridge. The Yinzibang stream and the north-south market canal cross here, and because one bridge runs horizontally and one vertically, and one opening is round and one square, the pair looks like an old-fashioned key — hence the local name, Key Bridge. The arched bridge crosses the market canal; the beam bridge lies flat over the mouth of the Yinzibang, its opening only just wide enough for a small boat.
Tip Be here at 07:00. By ten there are a thousand people on it and the photograph is gone.
The rich man's house
Built by the descendants of Shen Wansan on the south side of Nanshi Street, just east of Fu'an Bridge: seven bays, five gate towers, more than a hundred rooms spread along a 100 m axis over 2,000 sq m, and a provincial-level protected site. Originally called Jingye Hall, renamed Songmao Hall at the end of the Qing, built in 1742 by Shen Benren. The front is the water gate and landing stage where the family moored and washed; the middle is the gate tower, tea hall and main hall for receiving guests and conducting weddings, funerals and business; the back is the living quarters. The whole thing is a classic halls-in-front, chambers-behind plan, linked into an enormous horse-run gallery.
Tip Look up at the walkway gallery rather than at the furniture — the way the two rows of buildings are stitched together is the clever part.
Ming, with a canal through it
One of the handful of Ming buildings still standing in Zhouzhuang. Originally Yishun Hall, built in the Ming, sold to a family named Zhang in the early Qing and renamed Yuyan Hall. Seven bays, seventy-odd rooms, more than 1,800 sq m. The Rujing canal runs straight through the house — 'the sedan chair enters at the front gate, the boat passes through the middle of the home'. Past the street-front gate hall is a courtyard, green and shaded, with low wing rooms on either side; the brick gate tower, the solid stone columns and the fine carving have been damaged by five centuries but still show what the house was. The main hall is wide and bright, and its columns sit on rare wooden drum bases, which is the giveaway of a Ming building.
Tip Stand in the hall and look down at the water. That is the single most photographed idea in the town and it is an idea, not a view.
Bridge-tower
The only surviving three-dimensional bridge-and-tower structure in the south of the Yangtze: solid, unpretentious stone, built in the Ming. Together with the Twin Bridges and Zhenfeng Bridge it carries the spirit of the town — wide water, green trees closing over it, and small boats passing under the arches with the sound of the scull.
Tip This is the bridge the night boats pass under, and the one the strings come out of. Come back after dark.
The poets' tavern
Beside Zhenfeng Bridge, and originally the Deji wine shop. In the early 1920s the founders of the Nanshe literary society — Liu Yazi, Chen Qubing, Wang Dajue and Fei Gongzhi — drank and sang here on four occasions, wrote on the spur of the moment, and eventually collected more than a hundred of the poems into the 'Milou Collection', which made the place famous. The restored building keeps its old appearance, leaning on the water beside the bridge.
Tip It is the poets and the poems you come for, not the building. Read the story before you go in.
Temple on water
In the first year of the Song Yuanyou era, 1086, a local man, Zhou Digong lang, gave up his house to make a temple on the shore of Baixian Lake; expanded over the centuries it became a famous monastery with hall upon hall and a great deal of incense. In the 1950s the halls were turned into a grain store. As tourism grew, the temple was rebuilt in 1995 in under a year as a temple-garden that borrows its scenery from the water, on the central axis of the park: gate hall, Zhigui Pavilion, the Great Hero Hall and the sutra tower. Yellow walls, exposed tiles, carved beams.
Tip It sits at the far end of the town, so it is quiet — which is a good reason to walk out to it rather than skip it.
The legend
The house is at Dongcha in Zhouzhuang, a Ming-style reconstruction designed and built on the original site from historical records: bronze figures, brick carving, lacquer carving, scale models, panels, dioramas, clay sculpture and comic-strip panels telling how he made his money, the setbacks in his trading life and the scenes of the Shen household at home. The water tomb is at the head of Yinzibang, the little stream north of the town — clear and winding, red duckweed and green algae, dense reeds. Legend has it that at the end of Yinzibang there is a pool fed by a spring that never dried, and that under the water, in a very solid old tomb, Shen Wansan's coffin lies. The glitter on the surface is said to look like scattered silver.
Tip Take the boat out to it rather than walking — the approach along the reed channel is the point.
The old name
At the west mouth of the Zhongshi canal, linking Zhenfeng Lane and Xiwan Street: a single-arch stone bridge, named for Zhouzhuang's old name Zhenfeng li. Repaired in the seventh year of the Ming Chongzhen era and rebuilt in the fourth year of the Qing Yongzheng era, 1726. The bridge is 12.2 m long and 2.8 m wide; its arch is intact and there is a lycium growing out of the stonework, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes it.
Tip Milou is right beside it. Do them together.
Scholar's house
Ye Chucang was a Zhouzhuang man: a member of the Tongmenghui, a noted Nanshe poet and a political figure. His house, Zuyin Hall, was built in the Tongzhi era of the Qing. Deep courtyards, generous space, carefully built, varied in style and finely carved — an accumulation of everything the southern water towns knew about building. Ye drank and matched poems here with friends including Liu Yazi and Su Manshu.
Tip It is on the way between Milou and the west end of town, so it costs you nothing to include.
On the water
West of the old town, the Baixian river is clear, flat-bottomed, firm and weedy, which is why it is so rich — and why it gives the lake its name. It covers 7.6 sq km and averages 2.5 m deep, and it gathers nearly every good thing the southern water country has to eat. Every evening the fishing boats come back, drop anchor along the bank, hang their nets, sell their fish and sing, which is the whole 'fishing boats sing at dusk' scene. Zhouzhuang also runs dragon-boat racing, fast sculling, lake boats, sailing boats, floating river lanterns and cormorant fishing.
Tip Come down to the bank at dusk when the boats are in. It costs nothing and it is the least touristed thing in town.
Extra ticket
A visual-illusion house: walking through walls, invisibility, floating in mid-air, distorted bodies, a miniature country, escaping from the mouth of a giant snake — the sort of thing you would otherwise only meet in science fiction or a dream, and here you can go through it. There is also a holographic-audio room that is meant to take you back a thousand years into the legendary Zhouzhuang.
Tip It is not on the ¥100 ticket. Decide whether you want it before you pay, and know that children like it more than adults do.
Food
The dish. A hind leg of the right fat-to-lean ratio, simmered or steamed in a large earthenware pot for a full day and night, served steaming with mahogany-red skin and a full shape. Then the trick: from the two long bones running through the joint, draw out one slender bone, and the shape of the knuckle does not move; use the bone as a knife and the joint is cut cleanly open.
Shen Wansan hired noted cooks and put their work under one name. The banquet insists on seasonality and precise sourcing, and on colour, aroma, taste and form all being right. Beyond the knuckle: three-flavour dumplings, steamed mandarin fish, steamed eel sections, water-shield and perch soup, ginger pond snails, stuffed oil-packets, bean-curd parcels, stewed dried tofu and slow-cooked lotus root.
Known locally as soup noodles-gluten: a wrapper of wheat gluten around a filling of chicken breast, fresh shrimp and pork leg, chopped fine with spring onion, ginger and yellow wine, boiled in chicken stock. Thin skin, tender filling, translucent — a snack, a dish and a soup in one bowl.
A farmhouse pickle of mantou cabbage, well known across the southern water country. The name works two ways: the grandmothers of Zhouzhuang are the ones who make it best, and it is also one of the finest things served with grandmother's tea.
Green dumplings made with the juice of spring greens — usually one of three wild plants, snow-thistle, mugwort or cudweed — boiled with lime, rinsed, and kneaded into glutinous rice flour. Bright green, soft, and sold in season.
Made after the start of winter from a shrimp so fine it is called the 'needle shrimp' — under an inch long, bent like an eyebrow when alive, shaped like the needle country women used for their hair. Steamed glutinous rice is folded through it with yellow wine, ginger, Sichuan pepper and salt, and after a week or so it turns orange-red flecked with white rice grains and smells extraordinary.
Made from top-grade long-grain glutinous rice, roasted and milled, mixed to an inherited recipe, then steamed and baked with careful control of the heat and cut by hand — eight stages from raw material to packet. Particularly good for children and older people, and the standard thing to carry home.
A cosseted aquatic plant that likes warmth, clean water and still backwaters; there are red-stemmed and green-stemmed kinds. Planted around Qingming or around White Dew, picked from two months after planting, the leaves floating on the surface, oval, slippery-tender, with a clear jelly on the underside. A soup of the young leaves and stems is fresh, good and nourishing.
Named for being the size of a human palm, and eaten the legendary two ways: the gills go into soup, the flesh is braised in soy. The flesh is particularly good because the fish is raised on meat. It is sold by the fish rather than by weight, it is expensive, and it is found in Zhouzhuang.
The river and the lake are the larder: the three whites and the three treasures — perch, white clam and silver fish — plus eel, of which the local saying runs 'when the rice ripens the eel rivals ginseng'. Turtle and river shrimp too. Crystal shrimp in summer and autumn: glossy, full, springy, naturally sweet.
The custom of the place. In town and country alike you see people of every age around one table, cup after cup of clear tea and dish after dish of tidbits, talking and laughing. It is how the women of Zhouzhuang keep in touch and pass the time. The old way of making it is called stewed tea: rainwater kept in a big jar, ladled into an earthenware pot, set on a brazier and boiled over twigs; brewed in a lidded bowl or a purple-clay pot, first wetted with a little boiling water to wake the leaves, then covered, then flooded.
Zhouzhuang grows rice and distils well, and the white spirit is the best of it. New glutinous rice is steamed, dosed with the starter, left in a jar until it becomes mash, strained, mixed with river water and stood against a wall for a month or more — the result is 'leaning-on-the-wall clear', pale and clean-tasting. The wine the Shen household made in the tenth lunar month was the most prized, which is why it is also called Wansan wine.
Where to eat
The old name, on the water
An old-established restaurant right by Fu'an Bridge and Shen Hall, still with its Ming-Qing look — elegant, quiet, built over the water. This is the place to sit down to the Wansan banquet properly; the knuckle here is the one people talk about.
A century on the bridge
West of Fu'an Bridge, and it got its name in the early years of the Republic when the Kuomintang elder Liu Yazi and Ye Chucang drank and wrote poems here. Nearly a hundred years old.
The noodle
The house speciality is eel-shred noodles and almost everyone who comes in orders a bowl. The cooking is good and the prices are fair.
Take one home
The old-name specialist shop for the knuckle, beside Shen Hall on the old street. Proper flavour and fair prices — the place to buy one vacuum-packed rather than eat in.
Tea on the canal
The tea house on the crafts street named for the writer Sanmao. Sit with a pot and the tidbits that go with it and watch the boats go by — the point of grandmother's tea is the sitting, not the tea.
Kunqu, boats and tea
Weekends
Kunqu was listed as a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity on 18 May 2001. The old opera stage was rebuilt to bring it back and works with the Jiangsu Kunju Company on a year-round programme, so that visitors get the particular flavour of the art and an experience that stays with them. Original pieces such as 'The Peony Pavilion' run every weekend inside the scenic area. Kunqu is good at fine shades of feeling and asks for a fluid, careful delivery — you will sink into the rise and fall of the lines even if you do not follow the Wu dialect.
Tip Sit on the wooden benches under the stage the way people used to. Whether or not you understand it, sitting through one set is the respectful thing to do — and the reason you came.
The night
Zhouzhuang keeps hundreds of sculled boats working the water lanes. In the evening board at the water steps opposite Shen Hall, drift out under the bridge-tower at Fu'an Bridge, and listen to the strings coming from the bridge house and the pipa from the windows along the bank. The night town is still plain, but it has acquired something else entirely, and the lamp boats are what gives it that extra dimension.
Tip Go after 19:00, when the day visitors have gone and the lanterns are the only light on the water.
By boat
Boats run two ways. In the old town they are ride-only, not for hire. The out-of-town route leaves from the old opera stage, runs to Shen Wansan's former home and back, passing his water tomb in the Yinzibang channel; on board you can drink grandmother's tea and eat the local tidbits, and the banks are green trees, red flowers and birdsong all the way. The canal route boards at the pier opposite Shen Hall and threads the old water lanes to a boatman's song, running from Baixian Lake to the South Lake along the Jishui Gang channel.
Tip Take the boat out of town, not just around it — the reed channel out to the water tomb is the part you cannot walk.
On the lake
Ringed by lakes and rivers, Zhouzhuang has a full water-borne programme: dragon boats, fast sculling, lake boats, sailing boats, floating river lanterns and cormorant fishing. Cormorant fishing is an old and strange way to fish. The bird is also called the water crow; its formal name is lu ci. It is black all over with a long conical beak, a hook at the tip and a small pouch under the jaw. It swims superbly — legs set far back, toes broadly webbed, kicking hard, and once underwater it is nimble, fast and fierce.
Tip Cormorant displays run on the lake rather than in the town lanes — ask at the pier for the day's times.
Every April
Each April Zhouzhuang puts on tea-ceremony demonstrations. Tea drinking here goes back far enough that nobody can say when it began, and the customs have names for everything: grandmother's tea, discussion tea, wedding tea, spring tea, first-month tea. If tea is your subject, this is the week to come and learn the whole system properly.
Tip The names are the interesting part. Discussion tea is how disputes were settled: an respected elder convened both sides over tea and talked it down until the matter was small enough to drop.
Two hundred years old
Xuanjuan is a folk narrative-singing form particular to Zhouzhuang's villages, somewhere between a ritual ensemble and pingtan. There are two kinds, by the size and complexity of the troupe. Silk-string xuanjuan uses six performers on erhu, sanxian, flute, wooden fish and bronze chime, mixing traditional kunqu airs and the folk tune 'Four Seasons' with Shanghai opera and Wuxi opera melodies; the lead performer wears a long gown and wide sleeves, holds a folding fan and a gavel, and both speaks and sings. Repertoire includes 'Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai', 'Qin Xianglian', 'Gu Dingchen' and 'White Robe Mountain'. Wooden-fish xuanjuan is a pair — one beats the wooden fish and sings and speaks, the other strikes the chime and intones the buddha's name. The form is about two hundred years old and spread from Zhouzhuang to Jinxi, Luzhi, Tongli and Qingpu.
Tip If you hear a six-piece ensemble in a village hall, stop. Most visitors never do.
Shopping
Zhouzhuang bamboo work has a long history — in the Qing a whole street of bamboo-workers formed north of the town, making baskets, winnowers, sieves, trays, couches, buckets, mats and pails. The weaving is fine and the results hard-wearing, which is why it was known across the neighbouring villages. The small, ingenious pieces made for visitors now are the good buys.
Cloth shoes that breathe and feel like you are standing on solid ground. More and more people are going back to them for a bit of honest comfort. City stalls sell cloth shoes too, but most are not layered soles and fall apart in days; the Zhouzhuang ones are the real thing.
Zhouzhuang sits where Kunshan, Wujiang and Qingpu meet, and the traditional dress of the local country women is strongly of the water country: head cloth, apron board, coloured sash and embroidered cloth shoes, all hand-embroidered by the women themselves. Young women embroider peonies, for wealth and happiness; older women embroider lotus, for peace. It is the one souvenir that carries the place.
The copper hand-warmers Zhouzhuang makes are praised for fine workmanship and a wide range of patterns, won a prize at the Nanyang industrial exposition and carry the name 'Zhuang stove'. They come round-drum, square, hexagonal and octagonal, with cloud scrolls, flowers, insects and birds cut into the lid and the upper body. Nominally a utensil, actually a piece of craft.
Elsewhere teapots are pottery or porcelain; in Zhouzhuang they are carved from stone, with relief work on the body that is lifelike and varied. If you are a tea person, this is the one to look at.
Beside the Chengxu Daoist temple on Zhenfeng Street there are workshops where you can watch spinning and weaving done by hand, and buy the finished cloth in all its colours along with clothes made from it.
The wine is the local white spirit, clean and pale, traditionally made in the tenth lunar month. The cakes are the eight-stage glutinous-rice pastry. Both travel, both are cheap, and both are what locals actually buy.
Xie Fuchun on Beishi Street, near the old opera stage: a small old-fashioned frontage selling established Chinese brands — the cheapest hand and skin essence is ¥12, the rouge and lip colours are a flat ¥38, small and retro in their packaging. And the Cat's Sky concept bookshop at 6 Xianyuan Lane, near Zhenfeng Xuan hotel, where you order a silk-stocking milk tea, pick a book, or write a postcard dated for later delivery.
Where to stay
The only real choice
Zhouzhuang's inns are well developed and independent travellers should look at them rather than at hotels, because staying in one is the whole point. The old-fashioned ones are inside the scenic area: you can walk out into the town at night and be there again at six in the morning, which is when Zhouzhuang shows its gentle side.
Budget, by the stage
Right beside the old opera stage, inside the scenic area. The town at night is beautiful and the town at six in the morning is more beautiful — people say it feels like living inside a painting. Rooms are clean, the owners are warm, and they can advise on Zhouzhuang and on the whole of east China. They also do proper coffee and cheap simple meals, with 20% off for guests.
Mid-range
Well regarded in traveller recommendations for its surroundings and fair prices, on the main street of the old town.
Family house
An inn made out of the family's own house, which is why it feels like a home. Prices rise in high season; book online.
The splurge
East of the old town, a ten-odd-minute walk from the Twin Bridges, with a herb garden outside where you can drink herbal tea and make herbal candles and soap.
Outside the gate
The star-rated hotels are Zhouzhuang Hotel, Zhouzhuang Grand Hotel and Shenjiang Grand Hotel; the Zhongfang Hotel and the Jingshui Loutai inn are well reviewed at around ¥200–300. There are also plenty of private guesthouses, and a room along the water or by a bridge has a flavour of its own — simple facilities, acceptable cleanliness, from a few dozen yuan up.
Getting around
Four ways out of Shanghai. The tourist coaches from the 80,000-seat stadium include the return fare and your first ticket; Hongkou stadium does the same; the long-distance terminal by the railway station is the cheap option at ¥29; and Qingpu or the south station are the local ones.
Suzhou is the easiest base — its north station runs a line every 20 minutes, and buying your Zhouzhuang ticket there gets you the coach free. Kunshan is closer still and cheaper, and Nanjing runs a weekend tourist coach.
Hangzhou runs a weekend tourist coach; Jiaxing has two departures a day from its north station.
Inside the town you walk or take a boat. Between the coach station and the town the bus is a token fare, the taxi is a flat ten, and the pedicabs are cheap but need a price agreed first.
Boats work the old town and the lakes in two separate programmes, and the prices are per boat rather than per person. In the old town they are ride-only; the lake and circuit trips are the ones you book.
Driving is a genuinely pleasant way to arrive. From Shanghai take the Yan'an elevated road to the G50, come off at Zhaoxiang — that stretch of motorway is free — then the 318 through Qingpu, Zhujiajiao, the Grand View Garden and Shangta to Zhouzhuang: 70 km. From Kunshan take the motorway exit onto the Kunzhou road via Jinxi: 38 km. From Suzhou it is 71 km via Luzhi, or the southern route through Wujiang, Pingwang and Jinjiaba. From Zhejiang, the Shanghai–Hangzhou expressway to Jiaxing, the G15W to the Wujiang south exit, then the X302 and the Suzhou–Tongli–Lijiang road.
Tips
If you are staying overnight, go to the photography point beside the ticket office and have your picture printed on your ticket. It extends the ticket to three days and three nights and lets you see every sight. This is the single best-value thing in Zhouzhuang.
The ¥80 night ticket is only valid for that evening and only admits two halls. The ¥100 day ticket covers fifteen and lasts three days with the photo. And the town itself is free to walk into before 07:00 and after 20:00.
On a holiday the town is a crowd, and the quiet is the product. If your dates are fixed, at least sleep inside the gate so you get the two hours on either side of the day.
At six the locals are washing at the water steps, the coal stoves are smoking into the mist, and the twin bridges have none of the crowds the internet warns you about. Visitors who sleep outside the town never see it.
Pedicabs are ¥3 a ride and useful, but overcharging is a reported problem. Settle the number before you get in, not after.
The post office is outside the scenic area on the north side of Quanfu Road, opposite Zhouzhuang Hotel, and its box is cleared at 16:30. The box outside the Agricultural Bank at the crossroads is cleared at 09:30 and 15:00. Plan around those two times.
Practical
Zhouzhuang is a place you visit for two hours a day and sleep through the rest of. Everything worth seeing here is free at seven in the morning.
| Tickets | Day ticket ¥100, 07:00–16:00, covering 15 sights; night ticket ¥80, 16:00–21:00, Zhang Hall and Shen Hall only; the Strange House ¥20 extra |
|---|---|
| What the ¥100 covers | Zhang Hall, Shen Hall, Quanfu Temple, old opera stage, Chen Yifei's house, Nanhu Autumn Moon garden, Milou, Shen Wansan's house, Ye Chucang's house, Shen Wansan's water tomb, culture street, Chengxu Daoist temple, Xianjiang fishing museum, Tianfu Museum, Zhouzhuang Museum |
| Concessions | Free: children under 1.2 m, people with disabilities, over-70s, serving officers, national guides, journalists, holders of an A1 driving licence. Half price: children 1.2–1.5 m, and 60–69s with ID |
| Ticket collection | Town and night tickets at the car park or the old archway ticket office; the circuit water tour at the car park office; the pearl-diving trip at the Diannan Road scenic area opposite the car park; the 'Four Seasons Zhouzhuang' show at the ticket centre south of the new archway |
| Scenic-area hours | 08:00–21:00; the old town is free to enter before 07:00 and after 20:00 |
| Boats | Old-town boat ¥1,000 per boat for six, 20 minutes, ride only; out-of-town ¥180 per boat for six, 80 minutes; South Lake scenic ¥40 for eight; South Lake speedboat ¥80 for six; town circuit speedboat ¥120 for six; circuit water tour ¥40; pearl diving ¥60; Four Seasons show ¥150 |
| Distances | 60 km from Shanghai (about 70 km by road, 1.5 hours), 38 km from Suzhou, 30 km from Kunshan; Hongqiao airport about 50 minutes away |
| Medical and money | Zhouzhuang People's Hospital, 50 Quangong Road — 0512-57219828; new-district community health station, 258 Daqiao Road — 0512-57218133. Agricultural Bank of China Zhouzhuang branch, 78 Quanwang Road — 95599; Postal Savings Bank, 115 Quanfu Road, 07:30–16:30 — 95580; also CCB and ABC ATMs |
Background
In the Spring and Autumn period this ground was said to be the city of Yao, the fief of the youngest son of a king of Wu, and under the Han of the Yue prince-bo. In the first year of the Song Yuanyou era, 1086, a local man, Zhou Digong lang, a Buddhist, donated two hundred mu of his land — more than thirteen hectares — to Quanfu Temple as its endowment. The people, grateful, named the place Zhouzhuang. In 1127, a man known as Jin Ershixiang-gong followed the Song emperor Gaozong south and settled here, and the population began to thicken.
In the middle of the Yuan, Shen You — father of the legendary rich man Shen Wansan — moved from Nanxun in Huzhou to Dongzhai village east of Zhouzhuang and prospered by trade, and the old market town took shape along both banks of the north-south market canal with Fu'an Bridge at its centre. Under the Ming the town grew west to Fujian Bridge on Hougang Street and Qing Bridge on Zhongshi Street, and the market moved to Hougang Street. Under the Qing the population thickened again, the west gate area filled with shops, and the commercial centre moved to Zhongshi Street — by then a great town of the south, but still called Zhenfeng li. It was formally renamed Zhouzhuang town early in the Kangxi reign.
In the twenty-sixth year of the Qianlong reign, 1761, the Jiangsu governor Chen Wengong moved the patrol office that had been stationed at Luzhi in Wu county to Zhouzhuang, giving it jurisdiction over Chenghu Lake, Huangtiandang, Dushu Lake, Yinshan Lake and Baixian Lake — nearly half a county. That is the moment Zhouzhuang stops being a village.
The speed of the change had a lot to do with Shen Wansan. He used the Baixian river — the old East River — which joined the Grand Canal to the west and the Liu river to the north-east, to trade out to sea, and turned Zhouzhuang into a collection and distribution point for grain, silk and a range of handicrafts. Its manufactures grew fast: silk, embroidery, bamboo ware, hand-warmers and white spirit were the leading products. The town you walk today, with its sixty per cent of Ming and Qing houses, is largely the residue of that boom.
Zhouzhuang has a subtropical monsoon climate and the town is built along the canals: street joined to canal by bridges, deep courtyards, high heavy eaves, wharves and covered walkways, arcades over the street, bamboo-and-stone balustrades, and chambers built out over the water. Everything is plain, clean and quiet — the definitive southern pattern of little bridge, running water, households.
And it is a place with its own music. Xuanjuan, at about two hundred years old, began here and spread to Jinxi, Luzhi, Tongli and Qingpu. Under the Republic the masters of the form were named and famous across the countryside — Zhang Mutang of Panlong village, Xu Shiying of Longting, Guo Zhaoliang of Qibang — and they were invited to perform at festivals and in the slack farming season. Alongside it sits grandmother's tea, which is not really about tea at all: it is how the women of Zhouzhuang keep in touch, and it is still done the old way in the old way's own pots.
The questions visitors ask us most about Zhouzhuang, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Any season, and never a public holiday. The climate is subtropical monsoon so the town works year-round, but on a holiday the crowds make the quiet — which is the entire product — impossible to find. If you can stay a night, dusk and dawn are the two hours you came for.
Yes at ¥100, no at ¥80. The day ticket opens fifteen sights including both great halls, and the free photo at the booth beside the ticket office extends it to three days and three nights. The night ticket is valid that evening only and admits just the Zhang and Shen halls — skip it.
By coach. Tourist coaches from the 80,000-seat stadium leave at 07:00, 08:30, 09:05, 10:00 and 10:55, cost ¥140 including the return fare and your first ticket, and take about 1.5 hours. Hongkou stadium departs at 08:00, 09:00 and 10:00 for ¥145. The cheapest is the long-distance terminal by Shanghai railway station — six departures a day, ¥29, about 2 hours.
Tourist coaches leave the north coach station every 20 minutes from about 07:00 to 18:05, the trip takes around an hour and a half, and the fare is about ¥17. Buy your Zhouzhuang ticket at the station and the coach fare is thrown in — effectively ¥83 for the ticket. Wu Zhong station also runs tourist coaches from 07:00 to 17:00.
The Twin Bridges, Shen Hall, Zhang Hall, the South Lake and the old opera stage. The Twin Bridges are one arched bridge and one beam bridge joined, shaped like an old key. In the fifth bay of Shen Hall sits a statue of Shen Wansan with his gleaming treasure bowl. Zhang Hall is one of the few surviving Ming buildings, with a canal running through it.
Yes. 'Triple Gate', Han Han's first novel, has a long passage set here — the author notes that even the car park is ancient, being made of mud, and after days of autumn rain it looks like the surface of the earth just after the planets hit it. Yu Qiuyu's essay 'Small Towns of the South' is also largely about Zhouzhuang, and he said the best way to see it is to hire a boat and go by water.
Surprisingly so for a village. It sits where Kunshan, Wujiang and Shanghai's Qingpu meet: 60 km from Shanghai, 38 km from Suzhou and 30 km from Kunshan, with the Shanghai–Nanjing railway, the Shanghai–Nanjing expressway, the Suzhou–Shanghai airport road, national highway 318 and the Shanghai–Hangzhou expressway all crossing the area. Hongqiao airport is about 50 minutes away.
Yes, if you can at all. The inns are inside the scenic area, so you can walk out at night and be there again at six in the morning, which is when the town is itself. A bed in the youth hostel beside the old opera stage starts at ¥35; family inns on Xiwan Street start around ¥80.
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