Zhouzheng - the "venice" of China

February in China, especially as far south as Shanghai, is not nearly as cold as back home in Canada. It's not exactly tropical either though, and even though it was warm enough to be raining on this day, we kept ourselves well bundled up to stay warm as our feet got colder and wetter...

We found a tourist center that sold day trips, and signed up for the last bus of the day (at 9:30 am) to head out to Zhouzheng: the Venice of China.  Actually, there are a fair number of "water-towns" in China. All of them are advertised as tourist attractions.  They have water ways for streets, and real gondoliers who pole the rafts down those water ways.

Zhouzheng is almost an hours drive away from Shanghai, so we crammed onto the bus with the other tourists and watched the rain drizzle down the windows until we were unloaded by a bridge somewhere approximately near the entrance to the tourist part of town.  Bea and I made friends on the bus with a lovely couple when I fixed his cell phone - the alert was in English, and he couldn't read it.  To return the favour, they swore loyal friendship and decided to take care of us foreigners for the day, which I really appreciated because I had no idea where I was going.

The entrance was down a tiny alley off the main road, and around a few sharp corners, and over a bunch of puddling gutters that ran through the cobblestone alleyways, which were more like narrow sidewalks between buildings.

We did find the entrance to the park, and were told that our tickets were unlimited entry - so we could go into all the museums and old houses without any extra charge.  The wife of the couple championing our cause for the day was determined to get every single penny's worth out of those tickets, so we trekked from one museum to another to famous artist's residence to opera house to whatever else was on the map with brisk purpose.

I just *had* to take a picture of this sign.....  sometimes the English translations of signs were quite creative.....

The only thing our tickets didn't get us was a ride on the waterway in one of the gondolier propelled crafts.  So we talked another group in line into "carpooling" with us so we could split the cost of the ride.  It was great fun, and somehow we even managed to cajole our gondolier into singing for us, which evidently was not the norm.

After a long day of seeing and viewing and touring we headed back to our tour van and climbed in. And then the van left, 15 minutes early and only half full.  With wide eyes, Bea and I could only be grateful we'd gotten there in time.... I have no idea how else we would have managed to get back to Shanghai!