Zhujiajiao is about an hour and a half from the Bund but still inside the Shanghai city boundary. It is on the Yangtze delta where there are many forks and bends making it a canal town. It’s been around a while, about 1700 years old. So it dates back to the Ming and Qing Dynasties. All the shops on both sides of the canal reminded us of the Hutong area of Beijing.
We first visited a noble’s compound. He had some beautiful gardens. This is the 9-zig zag bridge (9 is the lucky number for the emperor…)
There is a demonstration area of how farming was done. It’s the first time we’ve both seen eggplant actually growing. We’ve eaten a lot of it but never seen it grow. Kris made another friend.
The Noble built a grotto area as well which he called ‘the mountain’. Nice to have money for landscaping!
After having garden tour we took a gondola ride along the canals under the ancient stone bridges. The gondolas were paddled the same was as those in Venice but the drivers here don’t sing.
From there we toured the markets. Lots of interesting foods to see.
Fresh river crayfish alive and ready for someone’s lunch.
Dried foods to be either cooked with or ground into spices.
Pork and sticky rice cooked in sweet sauce. Looked so tasty and we would have sampled but neither of us were hungry and are still a little wary of our intestinal fortitude. Unfortunately we passed for today. Too bad because they looked and smelled enticing.
Potato noodles being made street side. Talk about fresh!
Cultured pearls from fresh water clams the size of a dinner plate.
They also make combs from buffalo horns. Combs in the top photo, base horn on the next. I think the powered grinder is an upgrade from ancient tools….
From there we headed back to our hotel for a rest. We are deliberately taking it a bit easy as we leave tomorrow for the Yellow Mountains where it will be more rural and we plan to do some hiking.
Dinner was a the Captain’s Speakeasy. Captain’s is a hostel for 5 floors then a bar with a terrace on the 6th floor. Lasagna was good but came in a tomato meat sauce so it was sorta soupy. Really tasty, just needed a spoon! Kris had another good pizza. I found Kentucky bourbon (Buffalo Trace) and Kris found Tennant Stout. So Italian, American and Scottish for dinner. In Shanghai. Have to love port city diversity.
We went back out to the river walk but today is quite smoggy so the lit building shots are a fail. Good thing we got them last night. I realize I forgot to include one last night, so here it is. And a bonus shot of a booze cruise pirate ship just because. Reminds us of our Christmas carol ships but on speed.
Right up the block is Nanjing Road where there is the shopping district. It’s all big commercial stuff now so we walked up and down but didn’t buy.
Like I said earlier, tomorrow we fly to the Yellow Mountains for some nature.