Zhujiajiao - Going Back in Time
to an Ancient Shanghai Water Town

Zhujiajiao is an ancient water town in the western side of Shanghai. Chinese traditional water towns are notorious for their very old houses lined up along canals and the bridges criss-crossing them.

Water towns sprung up along the many waterways as these have always been historically important means of communication and supplies distribution.

Zhujiajiao is about 1,700 years old. Here, residents strive to maintain their traditional customes and heritage.

The town is relatively peaceful and quiet, a nice escape from the hustle and bustle of the big city. It really is a beautiful town:

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It was a short drive from the center of Shanghai. It took us about an hour to get there.

Check out our Shanghai Map for the location in the outskirts of the city.

The town is small and compact. We strolled along the narrow streets, over the many stone bridges, and took a boat tour on the canals.

There are other popular water towns along the Yangtze and within a couple of hours of Shanghai:

• Zhouzhuang - is probably the most popular. It is also a Unesco World Heritage Site but also very crowded.
  
  
• Tongli - doesn't have the prominence of Zhouzhuang, but neither the crowds.
  
  
• Xitang - hard to believe this sleepy water village was the backdrop of the action packed opening scene of Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible 3.

Modernization has not left these little gems behind, evidenced by the Kentucky Fried Chicken that greeted us when we first arrived.

Efforts are constantly being made to counteract the pressures from growing population and changing lifestyles to try and safeguard the traditional essence and cultural heritage of the water towns. It would be a shame if it all disappeared. They are definitely a national treasure worth preserving:

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