Shanghai Daily News

Shanghai boasts many typical water towns on the outskirts of the city, however, Qingcun is somehow neglected. With a history of more than 1,000 years, the newly discovered ancient town located in Fengxian District is only 40 kilometers from the city center, or 50 minutes by road.

Slab-stone houses, slate-paved roads and complete tranquility are all now easily accessed.

Visitors roaming around the water towns, invariably retain in their memories the evocative silhouette of rivers, lakes, stone bridges, real boats and houses alongside the rivers and lakes.

Stone bridges epitomize the unique charm of water town. It can be said that the beauty of the water town lies in its bridges and rivers.

Among them, the Nanhong bridge, a traditional arched bridge built during Emperor Kangxi's reign (1662-1722 AD), is the most prestigious one of its kind in Qingcun.

Standing on the bridge, visitors can have a bird's-eye view of the narrow alleys and its reflection in the water. Vendors gather on the flat ground at either end of the bridge for trade especially after dark. The time I lingered around the bridge, a vendor was selling water chestnuts, a typical food of Yangtze Delta area.

Like most traditional wood-frame architecture in the water towns, the houses display wide eaves, giving considerable prominence to the tiled roof. Standing row upon row alongside the bank, the wooden houses were mostly constructed during Ming and Qing Dynasty (1368-1644, 1644-1912), featuring "Diaojiaolou"- an architectural style that the front side of the house overhangs on the stone stilts in the water while the backside is supported by a stone platform.

Households along rivers all have piers, where they take water, do washing, do business with merchants on the boats and chat with neighbors.

The river piers are made in different shapes, some are small, some big, some are vertical and some are parallel to the banks. Bigger piers can be used to shelter boats from the rain while small ones can be used for doing washing.

Two-sided piers usually serve for public use.

Unlike other water towns which have become popular tourist resorts in Shanghai, Qingcun is still a living town and retains its purity and honesty, where daily life goes on with the same customs and conventions from hundreds of years ago.

It has an obscure old village of white plaster row houses and narrow slate-paved streets along the ancient canal, where the people seem to be still living in "Red Mansion" times.

One can find a wood carver working at his age-old craft and ladies dressed in unique local cloths sitting in their doorways all day long.

Teahouses are the most popular places in town and where local people communicate with each other over a cup of green tea.

Early in the mornings, the local residents come from all directions with a copper teapot in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It is also a great place to play mahjong with a couple of friends on the Baxianzhuo, or Eight Immortals table, an old-fashioned square table for eight people.

The old wooden houses of Qingcun look ageless and immovable, as though their timbers have totally defied the ravages of time. Far and near, there are still traces of Qingcun's historic past like a destroyed memorial archway.

The story goes that during the Ming Dynasty, there lived a famous calligrapher named Zhangbi. For three generations his family worked in the ministry department and the local people took great pride in it. Hence, the creation of the memorial archway - memorial building erected in honor of society's role models, was inspired.

There also lies a Catholic church in the west of Qingcun which was established in the Qing Dynasty where an estimated 430 local Christians gather together to attend the Mass.

Qingcun was once a prosperous commercial and transportation hub due to its coastal location.

In Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), the area was a salt field, a place where salters settled down and exchanged goods. A former salt field once stretched many kilometers from east to west.

Li Bai, a prominent Chinese poet in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) praised the area's high quality salt. In one poem he said it was as pretty as flowers and as bright as snow.

During the most prosperous period, Qingcun's economy boomed with salt fields, salt warehouses, handicraft factories, trick shops and copper shops everywhere.

While the salt is long gone, the area remains important as many relics have been found buried in the ancient town. To this end, Qingcun water town in Fengxian District, was recently added to government's "city heritage" list of cultural assets, showing the importance the Fengxian District Government place on the preservation of the ancient town.