Why Fengjing rather than Zhujiajiao
Shanghai municipality contains more than one water town. Fengjing, in Jinshan district in the far south-west, is the one that has kept its own economy: it is a National Historic and Cultural Town, the first in Shanghai to be so designated, and one of the eight new Shanghai scenes. It is a 4A-level scenic area under the national grading system, but it does not charge a gate fee at all - you pay only for the individual halls you choose to enter - and it is markedly quieter than the towns nearer the city.
The walk is flat, entirely on stone paving and bridges, and covers the historic core. The car takes the group out and back.
The bridges
Fengjing was a market in the Song and a town by the Yuan, grown where the province of Wu met the province of Yue in the age of the warring states, which is why it still calls itself a town on a border. Water is the reason it exists, and the bridges are its fabric: fifty-two in the old town, the oldest of them Zhihe Bridge, built in the Zhihe reign of the Yuan and therefore around seven hundred years old, known locally as the couple's bridge because the shrine to the goddess of childbirth sits in its structure. The three bridges at the heart of the town - Qingfeng, Zhuxing and Beifeng - are what the town is photographed for; Beifeng Bridge replaced one of 1489, briefly became the town's first concrete bridge in the 1910s, and has since been rebuilt in stone.
The lanes, the gallery and the halls
Fengjing has twenty-nine lanes and eighty-four alleys, and the four oldest streets - Heping, Shengchan, Beida and Youhao - carry most of its surviving Ming and Qing building, some fifty thousand square metres of it. A covered commercial gallery runs 528 metres along the creek from Zhihe Bridge eastward, the descendant of a riverside arcade that served traders when this was already a busy Yuan-era port. Of the forty-six protected sites in the town, the ones on this walk are the Jinput Residence, the inner house of the Qianlong official Xie Yong, whose main hall carries a tablet written by the Qianlong emperor's eleventh son in 1794; the cartoon museum dedicated to Ding Cong and his father, both born here; and the Cheng Shifa ancestral house. Fengjing is where the peasant painting movement of Jinshan began, and there are workshops in the lanes where it is still taught.
Lunch and the four local specialties
Lunch is in the town, built around what Fengjing is known for: braised pork knuckle, dried bean curd, the local rice cake and the town's own rice wine, together with small-boat river fish. Lunch is payable locally and is not included in the price shown. Entrance to the individual halls is also payable locally; the town itself is free.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
