Day 8 Jiading & Qingpu

Jiading and Qingpu are both the furthest districts from downtown Shanghai, located in the Northwest and West of Shanghai downtown, respectively. This is the last weekend of my stay, so there were a lot of fun excursions planned. My uncle was kind enough to drive me, and he was the best guide.

First stop was the Guyi Garden, located in the little town of Nanxiang in Jiading. Same as Yu Yuan, it's built in Ming dynasty, but reconstructed in Qing dynasty as well. For architectural buffs it is interesting in terms of the contrast of two totally different styles. The garden was really nice, I thought it was even more beautful than Yu Yuan. I loved the live peacocks and cranes roaming in the garden.
Remember the xiaolongbao sold outside Yu Yuan mentioned earlier in the blog? It is nothing compared to what we had here. The original Nanxiang xialongbao just outside of this garden was awesome. Compared to DinTaiFung (mentioned in the 2004 Hualien blog), it has a thicker, bouncier crust, which may appeal more to some people. It's also much cheaper and sold in 10's and 20's.

We then drove south to Qingpu to the well-known beautiful town of ZhuJiaJiao. ZhuJiaJiao is a preserved ancient town, dating back to as old as 1,700 years ago. Some archeological findings dated 5,000 years have also been found, but the town's appearance is more like of the Ming Dynasty times. In short, the town is like a Chinese Venice (ok maybe not as big and dramatic, probably a Chinese Alveiro). The 60,000 residents live in the centuries old houses, cobblestone streets, and a lot of them make a living rowing boats for visitors along the canals. The bridges are beautiful, both the bright red elaborate ones and the simple wooden shaky ones. Qing dynasty post office and shops can be found here. In the narrow alleys, old ladies sell their specialty food - mostly made from rice, like rice-stuffed bamboo and sweet rice wraps. There is a whole lot to explore in this town and it's so photogenic - if I was here by myself I would have taken a million photos.

After returning to Shanghai downtown, we had Shanghai style cuisine for dinner. Shanghai cuisine seemed to have a lot of cold, sweet and light dishes, which is the direct opposite of the stereotypical Chinese food.