Architecture 咖菲论阿柒-In Nanjing

Having a Saturday trip to Zhou Zhuang(周庄), which the famous ancient water towns in China. Zhou Zhuang is known as Venice of the Orient, as the approximately less than a kilometers town is surrounded by rivers and canals.

With a history of 900 years,the buildings found here were Ming  and  Qing dynasty heritage. 13 old bridges are located at different spot as a linkage and the most famous bridge is Twin Bridge （双桥) because the shadow of the two bridges reflected onto the river  form the shape of a key.

The trip was really rush and it was crowded with people.

We visited two famous houses previously owned by rich businessman : 张厅and 沉厅. Both heritage houses are planned using Chinese traditional architecture typology: having a comparative narrow frontage, the depth of the houses are enclosed with a series of courtyards dividing the various family usage .

Zhou Zhuang is fully commercialized nowadays, the taste of an ancient town is almost lost here. The local’s living style is hardly being seen here anymore.

 Most of the alleyways were fulled of people and it really required a lot of effort to capture photos with  less tourists. The tourists are mostly China people, less than 10%  are foreigners.

Demostration on the making of bricks and tiles.

More photos: Photobucket