Water world
Our visit to Zhujiajiao - in Chinese, it consists of three characters, Zhu Jia Jiao - was unplanned. With a day to spare in Shanghai, we decided to visit Shuzhou, famous for its gardens and lakes.
By VK Singh, TNN |
Our visit to Zhujiajiao – in Chinese, it consists of three characters, Zhu Jia Jiao - was unplanned. With a day to spare in Shanghai, we decided to visit Shuzhou, famous for its gardens and lakes.
The travel agencies we contacted in Shanghai for the usual one day conducted tour to Shuzhou didn’t suit us as they left at 9 am and returned around 6 pm. Our problem was that we had a 10 pm flight to catch back to Delhi which we couldn’t afford to miss, with Diwali beckoning back home!
As we couldn’t afford to cut it too fine time-wise, we decided to make the trip on our own by bus and/or train, leaving earlier than 9 am so that we could get back earlier too. But holidays are holidays and we ended up leaving only at 10 am anyway!
Travelling in China without a guide is suicidal, if you do not speak Chinese. However, Sukesh and I had been to many remote places and considered ourselves intrepid travellers. While I was still in uniform – many years ago – we had often relied only on maps to find our way. We thought we could do the same in China.
Easier said than done, unless the map is conveniently printed in English. It rarely is. We, however, asked someone to write the directions on a piece of paper so that we could go from the hotel to the bus terminal using the Metro. By a stroke of good luck, a foreign tourist who was leaving town that day gave us a Metro map at the starting point of our journey!
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That solved our first problem - buying a ticket. We indicated to the ticket-seller the station we wanted to go to – Shanghai Indoor Stadium – and he promptly gave us the 4 Yuan (24 rupees) tickets. Tickets on the Shanghai Metro are sold in three denominations - 3, 4 and 5 Yuan. Considering we passed 10 stations with one line change, it was relatively inexpensive. After getting off at Shanghai Indoor Stadium, it took us almost 15 minutes to locate the city tour bus terminus, just on the other side of the stadium. We found that the next bus for Suzhou would leave only after 30 minutes, or 11.45 am. Known as the Venice of the Orient, Suzhou is a water town about 90 km west of Shanghai, a two-hour bus journey.
We were told that halfway to Suzhou was another small historical water town - Zhujiajiao- which we could see if we wished. The bus left on the dot and the 12 Yuan fare was definitely reasonable for 90km! We reached Zhujiajiao — halfway point — an hour later and decided to settle for that town instead of Suzhou. With only 4 hours to spare Suzhou would have been too rushed. We later realised, one needs at least four to five hours to see even Zhujiajiao properly.
Located on the banks of Dianshan Lake in China’s Qingpu District, Zhujiajiao is almost 1700 years old. Regarded as one of the best-preserved ancient towns in China, it is also called “Little Venice”, due to its waterways and boats. And tourists actually have to buy a ticket to enter the town.
A 10 Yuan ticket entitles tourists to just walk around; for 60 Yuan, there’s free entry to 10 scenic spots as well as a complimentary rickshaw ride. Since we were short of time, we opted for the latter. But the rickshaw ride was a bit of a gyp: it took us only to the first spot, just 200 metres away!
The rest of the town had to be seen on foot. Also, some places listed for free entry in the ticket remained unseen, sas we couldn’t find them! Going to Zhujiajiao from Shanghai is like travelling back in a time machine. I was reminded of what an American had told me years earlier on the sand dunes in Sam near Jaisalmer, which he was visiting for the third time. When I asked what brought him back, he replied, “Where else in the world can you travel back 2000 years in time, in two hours?”
The small houses and narrow streets of Zhujiajiao must have looked the same 1,700 years ago as they did now. The town is criss-crossed with rivers and rivulets, spanned by some 30 old bridges, each of them different. Streets run alongside the rivers, with thousands of old buildings on their banks.
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Curiously though, the houses actually face the street and merely back onto the rivulets face the street with their backs to the water. The white-walled, grey-tiled houses were mostly double-storeyed, with the upper floor for living space and the ground floor given over to cooking and storage.
The townspeople were quite friendly and most doors and windows were left partly open. Through these half-closed wooden doors we caught glimpses of people doing their daily chores. Since it was lunch time, the aroma of freshly cooked food wafted through every street. Small eateries were everywhere, as well as peddlers selling snacks like rice dumplings stuffed with pork.
We felt a bit like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner lamenting “Water, water everywhere... not a drop to drink”. In our case it was “not a morsel to eat! Most of the eating places were no-nos for us, being vegetarians. Every dish contained crab, turtle, fish or pork. We looked in vain for plain rice and noodles. Fortunately we had carried a packet of peanuts and that was lunch.
Senior citizens sat outside on the streets, soaking in the sun, chatting, playing cards or a game of chess. There were literally hundreds of small shops, selling handicrafts and souvenirs, but the prices appeared astronomical. The first place that our entry ticket entitled us to visit was the Fishermen’s Home, a museum displaying fishing tools and the culture and habits of fishermen.
The next on the list was the ancestor pottery and jade hall, which has a large collection of stoneware, pottery and jade used by local people. The third spot was a Chinese pharmacy. The City God Temple was interesting as it had three “treasures” – a stage, an abacus and the 1000-year old Gingko tree.
The Kezhi garden, built in 1912, is unique, in that it is a synthesis of Chinese and Western, rarely found in China. It comprises two gardens – the Ke (study) and the Zhi (farming), implying that both are important for a householder. The places we couldn’t visit were the Silk Road museum, the Post Office, and the Hall of Paddy and Rice Customs!
One of the famous landmarks of Zhujiajiao is the Fangsheng Bridge built in 1571 during the Ming Dynasty, the biggest five-arch stone bridge in the town. About 70m long and 6m wide, it is shaped like rainbow, so it is also called the Rainbow Bridge. Fangsheng means freeing captive animals, and even today visitors buy captive fish or turtles and set them free under the bridge.
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The bridge is one of the best places from which to view the town, and is always crowded. We were especially lucky, since a mass wedding had taken place nearby and 10 couples, the brides resplendent in the white wedding gowns and the grooms in black suits were there on the bridge. I had seen a similar custom in Russia, where newlyweds and their friends went to a riverbank after the ceremony to toast each with champagne.
As we waited for the bus to take us back to Shanghai, an old beggar came up to us asking for alms. We were on the verge of giving him something when several locals standing nearby, gestured to us not to do so and also said something to the beggar after which he moved away.
We wondered if they were all concerned about projecting the “correct” image of a modern, prosperous China...Beggars didn’t fit into the scheme of things. That was food for thought as we made our way back to the glitzy skyscrapers of Shanghai....
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