Zhujiajiao

Aside from sitting by the boat dock watching the gondolas go by, there was plenty to see and eat at Zhujiajiao. We sampled lots of street food and watched craftspeople demo their trades - from glassblowing to cake decorating to candy making to this one lady who made golden Peppa Pig lollipops by drawing on marble using hot liquid sugar and a simple ladle - pretty impressive!

At some point we got a bit lost and wandered into what was a sort of trades school training center. The sign on the building read “Happy Education” and it featured two very large graffiti works depicting the town’s main bridge and temple, as well as a quite nice metalwork sculpture in the entranceway. As usual, the kids thought Insta-Mommy was breaking some kind of law by taking pictures. The arrival of a security guard, did not help make the case... or did it?! Surely if we were doing anything forbidden, he would have let us know?

Later on in the day, walking along one of the waterways, we suddenly heard a loud splash! We looked over to see a young boy, probably between the ages of Davy and Meg, fallen into the canal. He was fully clothed and it was not evident that he could swim. Several ladies were screaming and very quickly a man jumped into the water to lift the boy back up to safety. Fortunately there are stairs (micro-docks?) every 10-20m or so along the canal - the man managed to get to the nearest set and haul himself out of the water too. Reminder kids: Don't horse about by the water's edge.Read more