Chen Yifei is responsible for the above oil painting, it's of a bridge in Zhouzhuang. Southern Jiangsu, and China as a whole, has a lot of old villages crisscrossed with canals. Zhouzhouang just happens to be the most internationally famous. Before the 20th Century, this really wasn't the case. It took Chen traveling through the town on a boat and becoming so inspired, he put brush to paint and captured the beauty of the place. Eventually, this painting hung in a New York Gallery. A prominent art collector even paid a large sum of money for it, but only to then turn around and give it as a present to Deng Xiaoping. I recently went here to take a look around. It looks a lot like what it did a thousand years ago. This is likely because the place is now preserved like a Chinese national treasure.
Even on non busy days that are not even in the tourist season, this place can be busy.
Even though it's retained its historic look, you can still find a Starbucks in here.
But, seriously, you don't come to a place like Zhouzhuang because you can find American coffee. You go to see ancient ambiance.
The boats in the narrow canals here are the same design as those of centuries past.
And in someplaces, you can actually feel like time has stood still here, Starbucks not withstanding.