On Saturday we got a 9:00 am bus from Shanghai Indoor Stadium along with two friends. Our bus driver cheerfully told us we should head back early and be on board by 3:45 since there wasn’t much to see. I was a bit worried there really wouldn’t be much to do.
I loved Xitang. It is a very cute area with tiny narrow streets and tiled rooftops. It is what I picture when I think of a traditional Chinese town. It is really touristy and charged an entrance fee for the town of 100 RMB. I thought that sounded really weird at first but they do use some of that money to make the town cleaner and nicer. They also have things like street performances of Chinese Opera that are paid for by the town. We pretty much spent the day wandering around. We looked at various little shops. I bought two handmade sketchbooks with real flowers pressed into the paper, four Chinese lanterns and a musical instrument called a xun all for 163 RMB (about $25). We had a bunch of snacks, some of which I’d never seen before. They cater to tourists a lot so the food was actually pretty good and I even found a few veggie items. As we walked along we checked out a few of the town’s little museums. Most of them were tiny and not that exciting but they were included in our tickets, so we wandered through them. There were small gardens called the drunk garden and the west garden, a button museum, a tile museum and a few others. We also took a boat ride. The main appeal of the town is that it is just very pretty. I took a ridiculous number of photos. Since it is a water town there are canals everywhere. Some people compare these towns to Venice but the architecture is obviously completely different. It made for a really pleasant day trip. I can’t wait to check out the rest of the water towns!
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