Ancient water towns around Shanghai

I’ll continue writing about some hopefully useful topics for people coming to Shanghai either as tourists or maybe to live here and exploring various places around the city. So today’s post deals with few ancient water towns in Shanghai. I myself have been to two of them, to Qibao (七宝) and Nanxiang Guyi Garden (南翔古意园). Qibao is 360-meter long south-north boulevard running across the Qibao ancient town. It is easily accessible with the subway line 9 as there is a station called Qibao too. The street offers visitors all kind of different foods and drinks, whereas the area around the North Square has many shops offering local handicrafts and arts.

Just like Qibao, Nanxiang is also located about a 50-minute metro ride from the city center and it is on line 11. The Guyi Garden itself is regarded to be one of the most important classical gardens in Shanghai. There are many pavilions, ponds, twisted brooks and bridges. Compared to Qibao, in Nanxiang there were no shops for visitors and it was much less crowded. So if you want peacefully see some traditional Chinese gardens, Nanxiang is definitely a good choice and the ticket fee of 12rmb is not bad. Other recommendable water towns around Shanghai are Zhujiajiao (朱家角), Fengjing (风景), Nanxun (南浔), Xitang (西塘)and Tongli (同理). Maybe I’ll have time later during this spring to visit some of them too.