Around The World Without Flying: Our visit to Shanghai Part 1

Today was so full of interesting sights and experiences, in this entry I will confine myself to talking about our drive to and tour of the ‘Watertown of Zhujiajiao’, which turned out to be nestled in the middle of the outer suburbs of Shanghai, the second largest city in China. (Beijing is the third largest city.) I will talk about our visit to the incredible silk factory in the next entry.

It was a freezing cold day, with drizzling rain and fog, so was not the best day for taking photos. Most of us were underdressed for the weather conditions, so shivered and shook whenever we were outside. But our friendly and very informative tour guide told us the Chinese celebrate the rain and any water, as it means good luck, which in turn means making money. This is why whenever they can, Chinese people live near water or have a pond, making sure it is in front of them and therefore able to confer riches in the future.

The people who lived in the middle and outer suburbs we passed through must be very lucky, as there were countless canals. We saw a lot of land covered in long ‘tunnels’ of plastic near these waterways, but I do not know what was growing in them. Mostly people lived in apartment blocks about 2-10 storeys high, some old, some new, and there also were some individual dwellings near the market gardens. As was the case in Hong Kong, apartments are very expensive, and since you have to be able to provide a deposit for 50% of the value of the apartment to secure a loan, most couples defer marriage until well into their 30s. So the birth rate is controlled by sheer practical economics.

In contrast to the surrounding apartment blocks, the Watertown is several hundred years old and a very popular tourist attraction. It is like the Venice of China, all built around canals, and very charming. It mainly consists of a variety of little shops that line the canals and alleyways, which sell just about everything, from silk goods to jewellery to an extraordinary array of foods, including a lot of very enticing-looking confectionery. However, we had little opportunity to buy anything.

We walked around the town for two hours, which was more challenging than you might think. You had to watch your feet all the time to ensure that you did not slip on the cobblestones and small paving blocks, which had little rivulets of water streaming between them. But then you had to raise your head very slowly when trying to glimpse the views, so you were not poked in the eye by all the umbrellas. But it was very worth it to see this delightful town and to know that you were treading where people had trod several hundred years ago, just as it had been very worth clambering over rocks in temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius to view those ancient Aboriginal rock paintings. I am still in awe of the fact they were painted tens of thousands of years ago, long before the times of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Chinese.

Here are some photos. More in the next entry.