Friday, October 21, 2011
Sorry it has taken me a little while to get back to the Saturday expedition… it has been kinda crazy. I picked up another Bible Study when the Revelations Study did not work out… it was full and I could not get in. I talked about trying to get in for the Spring Study… Paulyn, the coordinator, asked if I would lead it… have to pray about that. But until then, I signed up for ‘Jonah, A Life Interrupted’. Anyway… time has gotten away from me… back to the tour.
The last leg of the tour was the Water Village. It was charming. And you will understand why when you read about the history. Incredible it has survived all these centuries!!
Zhouzhuang is a township of Kunshan City - a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. The town is situated between Suzhou and Shanghai, 30 km the southeast of Suzhou and 60 km the southwest of Shanghai.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, Zhouzhuang was a part of the King of Wu and called Yaocheng. It was called Zhouzhuang after ZhouDigong donated more than 200 acres to the local Quanfu Temple during the Yuan Dynasty (1860). By the mid-Yuan Dynasty, Wanshan Shen was using its superior geographical advantage to do trade, hence, Zhouzhuang became a distribution center of food, silk, ceramics, arts and crafts in the south of China. It was officially named Zhouzhuang town on the beginning of Qing Dynasty.
Dubbed 'Venice of the East', this town boasts the best water town preserved in China. The town has a history of over 900 years and most of residencies and houses in the town were built in Ming (1368-1644) or Qing Dynasties (1644-1911). The rivers and streams in Zhouzhuang crisscross the town and are spanned by 14 stone-arch bridges constructed in Yuan (1271-1368), Ming, and Qing Dynasties. Many thanks to these waterways, the town avoided the chaos that might be caused by wars in the past dynasties and most of its architectural layouts have eventually remained intact.
There are many fantastic places and views to visit and see, including Twin Bridges, Fuan Bridge, Shen House, Milou Tower, and more. Many bridges in the town show unique bridge traditions different from other designs. The most amazing view displays a house where a boat can enter the property through the front gate and sail through the courtyard.
The public was aware of the beauty of Zhouzhuang in 1985 after the painting, the Remembrance of My Hometown, by Chen Yifei, was presented to Deng Xiaoping, China’s most respected political veteran, by Mr. Armand Hammer, chairman the board of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation of the United States.
It was a sight to see…
We happen to walk past a candy maker pounding the mixture… just like in Chendu. We stopped and bought the same peanut candy that we had in Chendu. It was waaaay more expensive though. But we had not found it again… until now.
The canals and bridges …
Below are the Twin Bridges… one goes east and west and the other goes north to south.
The architecture of the building and the foundation are impressive. You can see places where they have been patched with more modern materials, but the original retaining walls are visible as well. Guard rails are new… most likely installed when they opened the city to tourists.
The first site we visited, once inside the city, was ‘The Hall of Shen’s Residence’. Built in 1742 and located at the southeast side of Fu’an Bridge, Shen’s house was the private property of the descendant of Shen Wansan, who was the first millionaire of the south of Yantze River in the early Qing Dynasty.
His property was envied by the king and he personally funded to repair one-third of the Nanjing Ming city wall. He has many industries in various places, but he always made Zhouzhuang as his foundation. The whole building is Qing-style. Shen’s house occupies an area of more than 2,000 square meters (half an acre) and over 100 rooms.
It consists of three parts. The first part is the wall of the water gate and pier, which is used by Shen's family moored boats and washed clothes. The middle part includes the gate tower, the tearoom and the main hall. Tea room and main hall are places for serving guests, and handling weddings, funerals and other events. The furnishings in here are all very elegant.
The main hall called “Songmao hall” covers an area of 170 square meters and up to 6 meters. It carved very vivid figures, beast, and pavilions. The last section is the two-storied dwelling which consists of several buildings which are quite different from the main hall, more comfortable and refined in pattern and atmosphere.
Unfortunately there were a few casualties from the Cultural Revolution. This photo is an example of that… note the carvings that have been broken and smashed. To have survived until the 1960’s and then needless destruction... what a tragedy!
Getting our history lesson from Frank, our guide. That is him in the pink shirt.
In the receiving room…
A sitting room for the men… the bench across the room is quite deep… it is where the men would sit and drink tea and smoke opium.
Mr Shen himself…
The dining room… it is a series of small tables rather than one really long one… I thought that was kinda interesting… one for the men…one for the women… and then the children.
Back on the canals again… some are fairly wide as you see below… but others are really narrow. In the village area we expected to see the canals and boats for the tourists, but it is a way of life here. As we drove through other areas getting to and from the village itself… the canals were everywhere. Boats were tied up behind houses. We were told vendors still move their wares up and down the canals to sell to the locals… fish, fruits and veggies, and anything else one might be peddling.
No trip to a place called Little Venice would be complete without a gondola ride. So we cruised the canals being serenaded by our gondolier. Of course there was an expectation for donations for the songs… but it was worth it. Oh… take note… almost all the gondoliers were women!
The gondola ride is over and time to head back to our little yellow bus. It has been a long day and still have a long ride back.
Vendors along the walks on the way to the bus…
The lack of caffeine today had my head pounding… and I am guessing that the lack of much food probably contributed too. I asked the driver to stop if he saw a fruit vendor… I need something to eat and figured a couple of bananas might help. Fortunately we found several and stopped.
As it turns out, we got into major traffic going back and what should have been about an hour and 40 minutes ended up being about three hours. We had to drop off the others in Puxi before we would be heading across the river to Pudong. I was grateful for the bananas by the time we got home at around 9pm.
We were both completely exhausted when we drug ourselves into the apartment. We enjoyed the day and were glad we had gone. We will definitely be doing these kinds of excursions again because even though it was a long day, we got to see and experience places which we will never have this opportunity again.
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