Jiaxing's Yuehe Historic Street: A Shanghai day trip on the rocks

Driving through a rather tragically ugly part of Jiaxing in Zhejiang, of cheaply constructed buildings and sidewalks looking stiflingly overpopulated, one comes upon Yuehe Historic Street without a great deal of optimism. A parking lot obscures the canal, and the large handsome stone bridge arching over it. Once you alight, however, and cross into the historic street, you slowly begin to discover small treasures and intriguing hidden corners, one after the next. 

History on display

The small compound of low wood and brick buildings bordering the algae-green Jinghang Canal was first constructed at the beginning of the Republic of China (1912-1949) and became the business center of historical Jiaxing. Jinghang Canal was the main waterway of North and South China for 1,700 years.

Now, restored and expanded for modern day business, there are over 80,000 square meters of restaurants, teashops, handcraft shops, antiques and a lush bird and flower market. Yuehe’s buildings are built of weathered gray brick with tile roofs and carved wooden window lattices. Inside, floorboards and ceiling eaves are also wooden. 

Opened to the public just last year, and still partially under construction, Yuehe Historic Street is still relatively unknown to the tourist masses, so even on a Sunday, crowds are thin, unlike Jiaxing’s sardine-crammed canal villages of Xitang and Wuzhen.

Vegetable or mineral

Turning east along the stone streets and walking to the very edge of the street, you’ll find a few restaurants, all small, country-style and ridiculously cheap. The food is far from gourmet, but one recent lunch for four people of six dishes including fish and beef, plus four drinks came to just over RMB 100. 

Walking back west along the street, one passes tea houses offering tea rooms on the second floor with windows looking down onto the narrow street. On the furthest western side of the compound is the flower market crammed with stalls of plants, herbs and cacti, as well as many shops selling dogs, cats and birds, large and small, which all look rather pathetic, housed in small cages.

After walking the length of the compound, which takes only 10 minutes, one gradually discovers Yuehe’s specialty: naturally formed stones and rocks in strange shapes and colors. Collecting fine natural rocks has been a past time for nobility and the literati in China for a millennium, and some of the finest examples (sometimes called scholar’s rocks or spirit stones) can be seen in the Forbidden City and other museums.

In the small area of Yuehe, there must be a dozen shops, from open and bright to dusty and crammed, offering a vast variety of stones in every hue and form. There are cragged ones, whipped by the wind into fantastical shapes, and there are smooth and luminous ones, washed by an eon of water into sensuous sculptures. Many of the finest stones sit on elaborate wooden stands that have been specially carved to fit the stones' distinct shapes. If rockery is your thing, buy your stone here -- you’ll be able to bargain for prices half what you’d pay in Shanghai.

Yuehe Historic Street also boasts a zongzi museum, showcasing the sticky rice dumpling wrapped in reed leaves for which Jiaxing is renowned. You can see dioramas of the making of zongzi and read about its origins.