It was a very beautiful town of old buildings and canals; but, because of "historical preservation" and other such things, we each had to pay 100 RMB to get into the "old city", and meals of course within the "old city" were two to three times more than what you pay outside of the old city. Though expensive, it was pretty.
The beauty of the city I did find hard to enjoy with the constant soliciting from the vendors whose shops line every inch of the main paths. We did manage to find a very talented water colour artist tucked away into a hidden corner who did some beautiful artwork. Most of the vendors were for knick knacks and trinkets (combs, tea pots, toys, purses, etc.), so we thought our little artist was quiet a find. He pointed out to us that the other "water colours" were basically painted prints. He gave us a magnifying loop to compare his work with a sample of some of the others' work. You could definitely see the difference. The other paintings are printed black and white sheets with various water colours added to them. Under the loop you could actually see the dpi (dots per square inch). By looking at his paintings under the loop, it was clear that his were all done by hand. I had never thought to look for such a thing before, but it was interesting and did explain a lot.
We also tried our hand at bargaining once more... we did okay. Later, after we were done eating, we talked (communicated through broken language, hand signals, and a calculator) with the women running the restaurant we ate at, to see if the prices we paid were too high or too low. We did okay. Maybe five to ten percent more than they would have paid we figured. Not too bad considering.
Beautiful sceneries and peaceful canals!! Yeh all these heritage/historical perservations really make you pay extra just to get inside. Dad and I turn down a couple of visits to these " sites" because if you read the Chinese descriptions carefully , some of them were rebuilt after the Mao's Red guard cultural revolution. A lot of the historical sites and temples etc, were torn/burned down or destroyed because Mao wanted to tear out the old corrupted ways by the roots. Then in the last 15 years they realized what a bundle of money these sites could make, so before the 2008 Olympic games, these " historical" sites were faithfully restored and reconstructed. But i have to agree that all these sites even the restored one made you appreciate the long history behindthem.
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