A visit to Wuzhen village and Haining leather shopping centre

While I am on a roll tonight I will try and get some of this stuff updated. This trip to Wuzhen and Haining happened when I was still at Shaoxing. So in June it was and I have been very slack to update the blog. So here goes. The College (Yuexiu) took the foreign teachers on this trip. A small bus load of us.

Wuzhen is an ancient village in Zhejiang Province that is mainly a tourist place now, although there are still many people that live around the village. That's an understatement here in China as there are just many people ... full stop.
Anyway Wuzhen has all black roofs, old alley ways for streets and lots of market and craft stores. It is located on a canal system so goods could be shipped all over China. very interesting place for a visit one time. I liked our time here but would not rush back, although it is well worth seeing. We maybe were rushed a little so next time I would take it a little slower and look closer at a lot of the markets and shops. I am including a couple of pics that will give you an idea of the streets and the hordes of people. There is a good pic of Wuzhen with me and my flat mate Michael Denzel.

Now, Haining on the other had is completely opposite to Wuzhen. And I must say I have no pictures of the outside of the building. We only visited Haining to visit the leather shopping centre. It is a whole world of leather, 1000+ leather stores. A complete factory outlet complex devoted to all things leather. You name it and you can buy it there in leather. Unfortunately for me I did not need to buy anything for me ( that I could think of) and so spent the time looking for a few gifts. I did find many interesting things. But the highlight of my day was a sales girl insisting on having here photo taken "with the foreigner". Not that I protested to much. So here you go the one and only photo I have of my visit to Haining.

Oh and by the way, this place has another equal size building across the road completely devoted to shoes. Now that is something I want to get back to see.

Both places, Wuzhen and Haining are not far from Shanghai and if you were travelling here I would be going there to enjoy the experience of both ancient Wuzhen and the shopping in Haining.