Zhujiajiao (Zhu Jia Jiao)

Zhujiajiao 朱家角 is a famous ancient water town lying in Shanghai's deep west with a distance of 48km from Shanghai downtown, while its north end joins the border between Shanghai and province Jiangsu. The town's sheer size of the neighborhood in which indigenous culture and customs have been well-preserved and open to observation credits Zhujiajiao with the title "one of the best ancient water towns in China".

Walking through the narrow alleys penetrating the entire tract of the water town, you'll be welcomed by parades of shops, restaurants, groceries that are touting local specialties in the similar scenes that you would see in other ancient-town-like tourist destinations of China. In addition, the narrowboats floating in the canal docks are quite a good option to start a leisure cruise tour to travel through the town from a different sight angle.

Zhujiajiao is also called Zhujie Ge, meaning Pearl Street, or Zhuxi, meaning Pearl Stream. It has been identified that human activities could be traced back to 5,000 years ago in Zhujiajiao and a settlement here was formed during the Three Kingdoms Period 1,700 years ago. Zhujiajiao became a bustling commercial center in the Song and Yuan Dynasties and a hub in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Rows upon rows of stores, firms, wine-shops, and teahouses were erected with huge crowds of peddlers and vendors pouring into its streets and hundreds of ships swarming its wharves.