Zhouzhuang · Jiangsu
Zhouzhuang is called the first water town of China — 900 years old, 60% of its houses still Ming or Qing, 14 old bridges over a canal grid shaped like the character for 'well' — and it is 1 hour from Suzhou.
The short version
The place itself
Zhouzhuang sits on water the way a water lily does — the town is ringed by lakes and cut through by canals laid out 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, the bridges made the market. Fourteen of them survive, each different, and the whole place reads as the most complete surviving example of the south's little bridge, running water, households pattern.
It is nine hundred years old and it got its name by accident. In 1086 a man named Zhou Digong donated two hundred mu of his land — more than thirteen hectares — to the temple of Quanfu; the people, grateful, named the place after him. Before that it had been Zhenfeng li, the fief of a Wu king's youngest son. Under the Ming and Qing it grew rich on the trade of Shen Wansan, the richest man in the south, who ran grain, silk and handicrafts out through the Baixian river to the sea.
What you come for is not a list of sights. It is the hour before the tour buses arrive and the hour after they leave. Stay inside the town — a bed in a courtyard house costs from ¥35 — and you get the dawn, when the locals wash vegetables at the water steps and the coal stoves smoke into the mist, and you get the night, when the painted boats go out under the lanterns and the sound of strings carries off the water.
It is an easy place to reach and an easy place to leave. Suzhou is 38 km away with a coach every 20 minutes; Shanghai is 60 km and just over an hour. Combine it with Tongli, an hour on, for a two-town loop, or treat it as a day trip and be back in Shanghai for dinner.
Pins are plotted from real latitude and longitude on a 5° graticule. This is a schematic orientation diagram, not a political map — no boundaries are drawn.
Two bridges joined into one: Shide, an arched stone bridge 16 m long and 3 m wide, and Yong'an, a beam bridge 13.3 m long and 2.4 m wide. One horizontal, one vertical, one round arch, one square — the shape of an old key, which is why locals call it the Key Bridge. Chen Yifei painted it and Zhouzhuang went international.
The mansion of the descendants of Shen Wansan, the richest man in Jiangnan: seven bays, five gate towers, more than a hundred rooms over a 100 m axis and 2,000 sq m. In the fifth bay sits Shen's statue with the gleaming treasure bowl in front of it. A provincial-level protected site, open 08:00–21:00.
One of the few surviving Ming buildings in the town: seven bays, seventy-odd rooms, 1,800 sq m, and the Rujing canal running straight through the house — 'the sedan chair comes in at the front gate, the boat passes through the middle of the home'. Five hundred years on and it still carries itself like a rich man's house.
The stage was rebuilt to work with the Jiangsu Kunju Company, and original-flavour kunqu — 'The Peony Pavilion' among it — is performed every weekend in roughly 20-minute sets through the day. Kunqu was declared a masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity in May 2001.
The town keeps hundreds of sculled boats. Board at the water steps opposite Shen Hall after dark, drift past the covered bridge-tower at Fu'an, and listen to the strings coming out of the bridge house and the pipa from the windows along the bank. Lanterns, black water, no commentary.
A tavern on the Zhenfeng bridge, originally the Deji wine shop, where in the early 1920s Liu Yazi, Chen Qubing, Wang Dajue and Fei Gongzhi drank and wrote through four sessions; the hundred-odd poems they produced were published as the 'Milou Collection'. The house keeps its old look, leaning on the water beside the bridge.
There is no airport or railway station in the town; you come by road. From Shanghai, tourist coaches leave the 80,000-seat stadium at 07:00, 08:30, 09:05, 10:00 and 10:55 (¥140 including the return fare and the first ticket, about 1.5 hours) and Hongkou stadium at 08:00, 09:00 and 10:00 (¥145, about 2 hours); the long-distance bus terminal on Zhongxing Road runs six departures a day for ¥29 in about 2 hours. From Suzhou, the north coach station runs a tourist line every 20 minutes from about 07:00 to 18:05 for about ¥17 — buy your Zhouzhuang ticket at the station and the coach fare is thrown in, which works out at ¥83 for the ticket. Kunshan's bus centre runs to the town for ¥6.
Locally, the bus from Zhouzhuang coach station to the scenic-area gate is ¥1, a taxi from the station to the old town is ¥10, and a pedicab is ¥3 — agree the price first, because overcharging is a known problem. Driving from Shanghai takes the Yan'an elevated road to the G50, off at Zhaoxiang, then the 318 through Qingpu and Zhujiajiao: 70 km. From Kunshan it is the Kunzhou road via Jinxi, 38 km. Inside the town you walk or take a boat; there is nothing else.
| Month | Weather | Crowds | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 12°C / 4°C · cool, damp | Quiet | Good |
| February | 14°C / 6°C · cool, damp | Very busy | Good |
| March | 18°C / 10°C · clear and mild | Moderate | Best |
| April | 24°C / 16°C · clear and mild | Moderate | Best |
| May | 28°C / 21°C · cool, damp | Busy | OK |
| June | 32°C / 25°C · very hot, humid | Moderate | OK |
| July | 35°C / 28°C · cool, damp | Busy | Avoid |
| August | 34°C / 27°C · cool, damp | Busy | Avoid |
| September | 29°C / 23°C · very hot, humid | Moderate | OK |
| October | 24°C / 17°C · clear and mild | Very busy | Best |
| November | 18°C / 11°C · clear and mild | Quiet | Best |
| December | 13°C / 6°C · cool, damp | Quiet | Good |
One full day covers the fifteen sights on the ticket, the boat and a kunqu set. But the honest answer is two days and one night, because the town is at its best between 17:00 and 08:00 when the day visitors have gone — and the free photo at the ticket booth extends your ticket to three days anyway. A second night buys Tongli, an hour away, which is the other half of the same story.
Plan these days properly
Nanjing
Jiangsu · 4 tours
Nanjing is the capital of Jiangsu and one of China's four great ancient capitals — capital of six dynasties from 229 AD and of the Republic after 1927
Suzhou
Jiangsu · 4 tours
Suzhou is the classical garden city of the Yangtze delta — founded in 514 BC, still laid out over the canals of the 12th century, and about 30 minutes
Tongli
Jiangsu · 4 tours
Tongli is a water town in Wujiang, Jiangsu, cut by fifteen canals into seven islets joined by forty-nine bridges — every house is on the water and eve
Any season, and never on a public holiday. Zhouzhuang has a subtropical monsoon climate and works year-round, but on a holiday the crowds make the quiet — which is the whole product — impossible to find. If you can stay overnight, the dusk and the dawn are the two hours you came for.
Yes at ¥100, no at ¥80. The day ticket covers fifteen sights including both great halls, and if you have your photo taken at the free booth beside the ticket office the ticket is extended to three days. The night ticket is valid for that evening only and admits just the Zhang and Shen halls — skip it, and note that the town is free to walk into before 07:00 and after 20:00 in any case.
Coach, and there are three ways to do it. The tourist coaches from the 80,000-seat stadium cost ¥140 and include the return fare and your first ticket; from Hongkou stadium ¥145. The cheapest is the long-distance terminal by Shanghai railway station at ¥29 each way, six departures daily, about 2 hours. Driving is 70 km and takes about an hour.
Easily. The north coach station runs a tourist line 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 — or free if you buy your Zhouzhuang ticket at the station, which effectively prices the ticket at ¥83. Wu Zhong station also runs tourist coaches from 07:00 to 17:00.
The Wansan pork knuckle first: a whole hind leg simmered a day and a night until the skin is the colour of red bean paste, cut at the table with one of its own bones drawn out and used as a knife. Then three-flavour dumplings, grandmother's pickled greens, green rice balls, and in autumn the bafish, whose gills go into soup and whose flesh is braised. Shen Hall restaurant does the whole Wansan banquet.
Inside the old town, in one of the courtyard-house inns. A dorm bed at the international youth hostel beside the old opera stage starts at ¥35 and doubles start around ¥143; family-run inns on Xiwan Street start around ¥80. Staying outside the gate means you miss the evening and the morning, which are the only reasons to come.
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