Wuzhen

For my next trip I really wanted to go to a small town.  Vickie, my tutor, suggested Wuzhen in the Zhejiang province - near Shanghai and Hangzhou.

I wrote about how I got to Wuzhen and all the logistics of being there on this post.  I didn't find much on the internet so I thought if someone else was doing research maybe it would help them out.

Wuzhen is a historic scenic town built on canals with a population of 60,000 - only 12,000 are permanent residents.   It is 28 square miles.  Compared to the city of Xi'an which has around 8 million people this is SMALL.

The woman at my hotel spoke zero English but we sort of figured things out with my broken Chinese.  It was also hard for her to point me in the direction of the scenic zones (east and west). Luckily I know how to say East and West in Chinese!  I found the West scenic zone without any problems.  As soon as I entered I fell in love. 

I wished I was staying right in the scenic zone.   I found signs for the hostel and decided to check it out. While I was there struggling through another conversation I met this girl who spoke English and was also traveling by herself.  She kept saying how bored she was and was really anxious to hang out the next day.  I said ok and we arranged a time.  She seemed interesting enough and spoke decent English.  I had a feeling she would at least be better than exploring by myself.

I wandered around a little more before heading back to my hotel to go to bed.  I think Wuzhen is prettiest at night: