Discover Shanghai
Zhujiajiao Water Town
朱家角古镇
A canal town of stone bridges, whitewashed lanes and a Qing-dynasty post office, founded in the Song and the only real water town you can reach on the Shanghai metro. The 1571 Fangsheng Bridge is the largest stone arch bridge in the region.
The story
What makes this place special
A canal town in Qingpu District on the western edge of Shanghai, settled for roughly 1,700 years, with archaeological finds on the site going back some 5,000. It grew as a market and transhipment point on the waterways of the Yangtze delta, where rice, cloth and oil moved by boat rather than road, and it kept 36 stone bridges, a Qing-dynasty post office and streets of merchant houses because the modern city grew elsewhere. Kezhi Garden, the largest private garden in the town, is the set-piece house and contains the Upside Down Lion Pavilion.
What you’ll discover
Narrow flagstone lanes along both banks of a canal, lined with two-storey timber and whitewashed houses now largely given over to shops and snack stalls, crossed by humpbacked stone bridges - the five-arched Fangsheng Bridge is the big one and the place everyone photographs. Wooden boats punted by a boatman take you up and down the water. Away from the main shopping lane there are the old post office, Kezhi Garden with its ponds and rockwork, a Qing-era pharmacy and small temples, and residential lanes where people still live over the canal.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Metro Line 17 goes there and the station is within walking distance - this is the one Yangtze-delta water town you can reach from central Shanghai on a metro ticket, which makes it a half-day rather than a tour-bus day out.
- Take the boat one way and walk back. Seeing the bridges from water level is the whole point, and the walk back on the far bank is quieter than the main shopping street.
- Walk out past the end of the commercial stretch. Fifteen minutes beyond the stalls the town becomes an ordinary village on a canal, with laundry, vegetable plots and old men playing cards - this is what people hoped the whole place would be.
- Go on a weekday, and go early or stay late. By late morning at a weekend the main lane is a single-file shuffle, and the boats queue.
- Many individual houses, gardens and small museums charge separately or sit behind a combined ticket. Decide whether you want Kezhi Garden specifically before you buy anything, since the combined ticket covers sites most people never find.
- The food on the main lane is aimed at day-trippers - zongzi, pork trotters, stinking tofu. For a proper meal sit down at one of the canal-side restaurants at the far end, where local river fish and freshwater shrimp are the thing to order.
When to come
Early on a weekday morning, before the coaches, or the last two hours of the afternoon when they have gone and the light is low along the water. Spring and autumn; the canals smell in high summer heat and the lanes are miserable in heavy rain.
Getting around
Poor. The town is built on humpbacked stone bridges with steps on both sides, and the lanes are narrow, uneven flagstone and crowded, so there is no step-free route along the canals and a wheelchair cannot cross from one bank to the other at most points. The boats are boarded by stepping down into an unstable hull. A bad knee can manage it on the flat sections but will be going up and down steps constantly. Kezhi Garden has steps and rockwork throughout.
Worth knowing before you go
Line 17 from Hongqiao takes about 30 minutes, which makes this a far easier day trip than Suzhou's water towns. Arrive before 09:30 or after 15:00 - the North Street lane is impassable midday at weekends.
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