No. 1 Water Town Of China - Zhou Zhuang , offer a glimpse of life in ancient China
It lies at the middle between Shanghai and Suzhou, is an ancient town of Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province, where abounds with rivers and lakes. So it is thought by many to be the best waterside town in China.This ancient town has a history of more than 900 years old with many houses built in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Zhou Zhuang is clean, well-kept village filled with cobbled paths, arched bridges, tile roofs and tantalizing glimpses of old China. However, is a TRUE ancient canal town. Development stopped here about 500 years ago. The city has preserved the ancient village intact. No vehicles (including bicycles) are allowed. The "streets" are no wider than 2 meters and canals crisscross the entire village. It was a bright spring day, and the waterfront willows were just beginning to leaf, showing splashes of lime green in the cool May sunshine. Tourists floated by on boats, admiring the thousand-year-old stonework, especially the famous Shide and Yongan bridges, a pair of Ming-era beauties.

Travel on: May 2006
Admission Fees: RMB 100
Transportation Fees: RMB 40

Anji, known as “China’s Home of Bamboo”, is one of most famous bamboo counties in Zhejiang province. It takes about 3 hours drive from Shanghai. Before the year 2002, Anji was isolated from the outside world because of the poor transportation, and for many years its economy remained undeveloped. Since then, Anji build highways connecting the neighbouring cities like HangZhou and HuZhou.

AnJi has China’s largest bamboo nursery acknowledge by foreign experts as containing the widest and most complete variety of bamboo to be found.

The local people, mostly farmers, produce non-polluted products like bamboo shoots, alpine vegetables, flowers, and white tea which grown nowhere else in the country and are more expensive than the Dragon Well tea! For those who lives in town, sells bamboo handicrafts, bamboo floor mat, bamboo building materials and bamboo furniture. Things are very very cheap in AnJi… look at the photos, the mountains are form by bamboos! It’s gorgeous…~

Travelling Date: April 2006

This was the hotel that I’m staying in.