Wuzhen

Our latest weekend excursion was to the water town of Wuzhen, about 2 hours SW of Shanghai by bus. Our coworker Pamela had recently visited this small town and recommended us going. Unlike our last trip and possible future trips, this one was not listed in my Shanghai guidebook and I didn’t have a map! I couldn’t even find a decent map online because apparently Wuzhen doesn’t have many major roads. Wuzhen really is a small town even by Western standards. The town only has 12,000 permanent residents, (although this is not counting the thousands of tourists visiting daily). The town is only about 2 miles long and the only way to get around town besides walking is by bicycle taxi! Tina and I enjoyed a nice ride from the train station in a rickshaw. It was humorous to hear the taxi drivers chatter to one another as they passed by and Tina translated some of the comments for me- all of which centered around us being foreigners such as “were did you pick up that cargo?!” Although Wuzhen is quite popular for Chinese tourists, I think we saw about 5 other Caucasians over the weekend. At least us UofO kids don’t have to worry about losing each other in the crowds.

Wuzhen has two historic/scenic districts that cost a fee to enter and after we arrived early Saturday morning and checked into our hotel, we headed over to  Wuzhen West. Pamela thought we would enjoy Wuzhen West best as it is cleaner and quieter than Wuzhen East, which gets the brunt of the tourist flood. Both historic districts are surrounded by walls, canals, and security guards and to enter Wuzhen West we had to pass through the visitors’ center and take a small wooden ferry. After disembarking from the ferry, we were free to roam. Wuzhen West is oriented around a main canal a little over half a mile long and includes numerous little alleys and side streets. We had the whole day to leisurely wander the many winding streets and visit the shops because the tickets were single entry only and Pamela said we had to stay till evening to see the canal all lit up. Saturday was easily over a hundred degrees, humid, and sunny, so we took our time walking around and frequently took breaks either in the shade or in an air-conditioned shop or restaurant. We were all tired by the time sunset arrived but seeing the waterways and shops all lit up at night was most definitely worth seeing. After dinner we walked to the far end of the main canal and rode a small water taxi back to the visitors’ center, a fantastic and relaxing ride. The view from the water was picture perfect, (although I couldn’t take any pictures because the boat kept rocking). We ventured back to the hotel around 9:00pm, all sweaty and tired from the day. After showers, we got some beers from a nearby convenient store and enjoyed some late night grilled skewers of various meats, seafood, vegetables, and mushrooms that are popular street food in China. We sat on tiny plastic stools under the yellow street light at a trash littered corner, (no one seems to use trash cans in China), and enjoyed our greasy skewers. It was quite a different scene from the day we spent in Wuzhen West, but enjoyable none-the-less.

Reflecting on Saturday in Wuzhen West, I think we were all pleasantly surprised at how beautiful, quiet, and immaculately clean the historic district was.  The shops, houses, and streets were all in pristine condition but it seemed that something was missing. It took a minute to realize that no one appeared to live in Wuzhen West. There were no clothes hanging out to dry, no children using the sewer grates and landscaping as toilets, no elderly sitting on small wooden stools observing the street life, no one doing laundry in buckets on the sidewalk, no noisey scooters or bicycles whizzing by, and no shops that offered any kind of daily household items. It seems that the 2,000 year old architecture of the town has been preserved and filled with souvenir shops and tasty restaurants but all of the inhabitants disappeared. After doing some more reading on the town, I found out that Wuzhen West was just recently renovated/”preserved” and in deed all of the inhabitants had been kicked out. The town is a lovely place to visit but it is a little museum or resort-like in that it preserves and presents only the photogenic parts of its history. We decided not to visit Wuzhen East on Sunday but to walk around the rest of the town- the “normal” parts of town with actual residents and that doesn’t cost to enter. We enjoyed escaping the tourists and wandering down various alleys. We saw a number of combination garden/animal farms with vegetable vines growing up telephone poles and chicken coops built from a variety of scrap materials. We happened upon a grandma watching her two little grandchildren playing outside their home and we spent a good 20 minutes being entertained by the little kids. When the little boy and girl saw us, they quickly became a broken record of “hellos” and“bye byes” intermixed with giggles. Even grandma joined in the game.

We headed back to Shanghai Sunday afternoon and Brad and I are continuing to work on the 3D model and elevation designs for our hospital project this week. Our employer, Jun Li, reviewed our designs on Tuesday, provided some feedback and told us of some changes in the plans. Once Brad and I finish our designs, we have been instructed to each build another iteration only this time around Brad is to design a classical façade and I am to design an art deco façade option. By next week we will have four 3D models of different façade studies to show the client. Brad and I are not accustomed to designing in a particular style, and it will be a little challenging to copy a period style like the client wants. In architecture school, we have taken extensive history classes that review the development of architecture over time and have studied many various styles including classical and art deco. In our design studios though, we are not taught to design in a period style as architects back in the early 20^th century did. Again, this assignment should be a good learning experience as not all clients care for the contemporary aesthetic that many designers my age favor. I am enjoying the challenges at work and being busy just makes the weeks go by even faster, for better or worse. It is hard to believe I have been in Shanghai for almost five weeks now!