Great Escape: Shanghai

Brent Hannon spends a weekend in three charming water towns within two hours of Shanghai along the Yangtze delta, and manages to find a taste of old China. Sooner or later, most business travellers feel the urge to leave whatever city they happen to be stuck in and do some exploring. So where to go? In Shanghai, the answer used to be Hangzhou, but sadly it is not what it used to be: many of its canals have been filled in and its gardens paved over, making it an ordinary commercial city. These days, Shanghai-based tourists in search of old China should visit one of the six water towns of the Yangtze delta – Luzhi, Nanxun, Tongli, Wuzhen, Xitang and Zhouzhuang. All have won UNESCO heritage awards, are within two hours of Shanghai, and were once linked to Beijing by the Grand Canal, the watery highway which first opened them to global commerce. I sallied forth one sunny weekend to explore these towns, and managed to visit three: Zhouzhuang, Tongli and Wuzhen. The set-up at Zhouzhuang was the same as at all the water towns: a gate and an entrance fee, which buys a ticket to a preserved and prettified part of town filled with tourist services like boat rides, souvenir stands, teahouses, restaurants and displays of traditional winemaking, cotton-weaving and meat-preserving methods. Which brings me to Hillary Clinton. My visit to Zhouzhuang was shadowed by the previous presence of Hillary, who had visited in 2001, along with assorted other political wives, when their husbands came to Shanghai for the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation). For Hillary’s visit, the Zhouzhuang city fathers left nothing to chance. They drained the canals and refilled them with clean water, polished the ancient bricks and, rumour has it, even washed the leaves of the trees with fire hoses. My own visit was not nearly as heralded, but it was a pleasant morning nonetheless. Zhouzhuang is a tidy little tourist town with cobbled paths, arched bridges, tiled roofs and tantalising glimpses of old China. It was a bright spring day, and the waterfront willows were just beginning to leaf, while tourists sauntered around or floated by on boats, admiring the thousand-year-old stonework. By midday, a tourist rush-hour had developed on the canals, with water taxis bumper-to-bumper under the “best” bridges, which date back to the Ming Dynasty. Zhouzhuang is small, but it packs a lot of history into a modest area, and among the highlights are the houses of the rich; then, as now, the wealthy had it made. Just look at Zhang’s House, built in the early 14th century. This sprawling mansion features six courtyards, 70 rooms filled with antiques and a canal running through the courtyards. Tucked in the rear was a sun-dappled patio, with a stone table carved into a chessboard. I bought a couple of pearl pendants – these canal towns are famous for their pearls – and then went to eat ti bang (stewed pork hock which takes ten hours to prepare), a famous local dish, just as Hillary had done before me. We ate at the Quan Fu (“complete fortune“) restaurant, where, upon leaving, we were presented with the old “two-bill” trick – one price for foreigners, and one for Chinese. Our bill came to CNY152 (£11), while the same meal for Chinese diners would only cost CNY114 (£8). “Complete fortune” indeed – they would get CNY114 and not a yuan more. Under the restaurant stairs was a squat toilet, and I guarantee you, Hillary did not see that. There were a few other non-Clintonesque sights in Zhouzhuang that day too – a styrofoam container floating placidly down the canal, a couple of chamber pots heating up in the midday sun and some assorted panhandlers. You can ride a boat from Zhouzhuang ?to Tongli, but we took our car, since we had rented it for two days. At Tongli, we headed straight for the Sex Museum, as anyone would, but it was boring. How could a sex museum be boring? Take a few marble statues, add some unerotic clay figurines and a couple of old paintings of concubines, and you’ve got the formula. Some of the statues were amusing (“how do you do that?”), and I did learn the meaning of “zoophilia”, but for the most part it was a snore. Tongli is leafier than Zhouzhuang, and bigger, with wider canals and broader pavements. The pace was slower, and the town less densely packed. We visited Tui Si Yuan, the garden of seclusion and meditation, as well as the Green Autumn Pavilion, and then checked into the Wan Shun guest house. (Translated poetically, the name can mean “10,000 smoothnesses”.) As the shadows lengthened in Tongli, the atmosphere changed. The tourists went home, the locals came out, and the restaurants and teahouses began to look more inviting. I settled into a canalside table at 13 San Qiao Teahouse, and the longer I sat there, inhaling the sweet fragrance of the longjing tea, the less I wanted to move. Trained cormorants dived in the canal for fish, and the evocative music of an erhu (Chinese violin) floated along the cobbled streets. As night fell, the reflection of the red lanterns glowed in the water of the canals. Dinner was at 175 Shang Yuan Jie, just down the canal from the teahouse. We ate steamed fish, gong bao chicken, home-style tofu and green vegetables. Beer replaced tea, and we spent a pleasant couple of hours basking in the historical glow of the city. The next morning, after scouring Tongli in a fruitless search for coffee, we drove to Wuzhen, a couple of hours away. This was by far the richest of the water towns, due to its central location – a wide canal bisects the town and joins a thick river, still a major commercial artery. Wuzhen means “black town” and all the houses which front the river are painted black. Wuzhen has the same general features as the other canal towns, including boat rides, teahouses and souvenir stands, but with a couple of key differences – it is much more scenic, and the alleys are filled with handicrafts, practised just as they were five centuries ago. There are shops which make wooden barrels, cotton, silk fans, rice wine, cotton slippers and brass buckles. The na rou (preserved meat) shop and the winemaking shop were the most interesting. Na rou is made in winter, when raw meat is hung up to dry in the chilly air, like prosciutto. Proprietor Shi Yong Kang had dozens of different kinds of meat hanging in his shop, and I didn’t even know the Chinese names of some of those animals. Suffice to say that few of them were pork, chicken or beef. Meanwhile, over at the wine shop, they still crank out hundreds of bottles of rice wine each day. It’s made from nuo mi, or sticky rice, which is soaked, then steamed, then left to ferment for two days. After that, it goes into clay jars where it sits in the sun for about a month. Then, they extract the wine, filter it, and hand small cups to visitors: it is light, sweet and refreshing. In the old days, Wuzhen was famous for its stone-carving, and the well-worn pavements still retain their distinct patterns. There’s plenty of local street-life, especially on the waterway which serves as the main street. It is, as the sign says, “a historic town in which persist former features”. So which one-day getaway is the best? For peace and quiet, it’s Tongli; for scenic beauty and authenticity, it’s Wuzhen; and for convenience, it’s Zhouzhuang. I would recommend an overnight stay in Tongli, which has several good guest houses, or a one-day visit to Wuzhen. Getting there A car and driver for two days from Shanghai may set you back about £100, but taxis can be rented for the day, which is cheaper. All the water towns have good signs in English and plentiful explanations about their histories. Any hotel concierge can put you on the right path.