This morning, we visited Venice… no wait a minute, we’re in China. We visited Zhou Zhuang, also known as the Venice of the East, for good reason. It is a small town of about 20,000 people surrounded by water, split into 7 islands with 49 bridges connecting them together. We entered the “village” through a tourist entry barrier, much like you get at theme parks, and were transported to a new world. The streets are very narrow with tourist shops on either side, like a market almost, but every now and then you catch a glimpse of the canals between the buildings. Then we emerged at a bridge to the next island. On the otherside the paths follow the line of the canals and the hand powered boats float on by with passengers from near and far. Once out of the main tourist trappings at the entrance side of the village, we entered a very peaceful place that seemed generally simpler. Our guide told us that there you can take a boat trip around the village for a better, less busy, view so that was what we did. The boat took us out of the tourist areas into the “real” village, where the locals lived and worked, with fishing nets strung through the larger waterways and women sorting out the boats for the afternoon fishing in the nearby lake. Now we both feel we need to see the real Venice for a bit of a comparison.
The day ended reasonably early, so we relaxed back at the hotel to avoid the storm that seemed to have engulfed Shanghai while we were gone.