Growing up in Hong Kong: Hangzhou: Wuzhen 烏鎮

When the kids are away, the parents get to play! This year's "no-kids" trip took us to Hangzhou, but with an initial detour to Wuzhen (烏鎮), one of China's famous historic scenic water towns. It lies within the triangle formed by Hangzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai and is about a two hour drive from Hangzhou airport. Wuzhen displays its history through its ancient stone bridges, stone pathways and delicate wood carvings on both sides of the main canal that runs through it. Despite the town's 1000 year plus history, you get the distinct feeling that the town was "refurbished" as a tourist site (or theme park depending on how you see it) and you have to pay a special tourist entrance fee before you can enter the main scenic area.

Nevertheless, the "refurbishment" was tastefully done and there was no tackiness save for one manga-like statue next to the pagoda (see photos later) that are so evident in many of these done-up sites. One positive side-effect is that the grounds were very well kept and there was no sign of litter. We were half expecting a large number of foreign tourist but most of the visitors turned out to be Chinese with many of them staying overnight.

We were so hungry when we got there that the first thing we looked for was a place to eat. We passed this stall with only one customer in it but the Braised Mutton Noodle that was advertised looked good and it was indeed delicious. Wonder if it was because we were so hungry. Later that night we passed another restaurant that was supposedly even more well known for this dish (it was packed when we passed it) but alas we had already committed to trying something else and didn't want to have the same dish twice in a day.

We also visited a very interesting wedding museum.

A make believe dye factory.

And the local library.

After a long stroll in town, we check-in to our "motel", the room was small but clean and adequate and reasonably priced. We were so tried, we promptly fell asleep until dinner time. Once awake, we went in search for some good dinner. While walking the narrow streets of Wuzhen, we came across a newly opened restaurant called Spicy which turned out to be rather good. Dinner was followed by another long strolled.

We found a little tea house (no tea served) with a lady singing local opera. Didn't understand a word but a very interesting experience.

We stopped by the "pub" street and had a cold beer before calling it a night.

The motels are all operated by local families. Room clean and facilities adequate. The next day, we were greeted by a standardised but scrumptious breakfast.