"Ancient" Water Towns

One of the biggest tourist attractions in Chinese cities would most definitely have to be their water towns. 

Moon River in Jiaxing

Water towns are tourist areas that are supposed to look like ancient Chinese cities complete with bridges with dragons on them, booths selling traditional Chinese goods like fans and jade, and of course a lot of food. Type in any Chinese city on TripAdvisor and I guarantee that one will pop up. 

Courtesy of TripAdvisor

These places are really cool and bring in a ton of both Chinese and foreign tourists. A popular thing to do in water towns is to go to a store that rents traditional Chinese clothes and you can walk around the town taking photos. 

Tourists wearing traditional outfits

Some of the water towns will also have small theatres where the actors are all in traditional outfits. However, I have yet to find a single Peking Opera in China. They will sometimes have more gimmicky places to attract customers like a dinosaur museum with a moving dinosaur robot in front. 

In a new water town in Jiaxing, Xin Xitang.

Almost all of these water towns have their own "specialty" as well. In Huangshan they were famous for wood carvings and in Jiaxing they spin sugar into animal shapes. 

You can spin the arrow and it will land on an animal that the sugar maker can draw. 

Sugar spun animals

Shoe store in Huangshan

These water towns look old and sell old items and promote how they have these ancient scholars that used to live there, but in reality most of them were probably made in the last 20 years or so. There are a very few original water towns left in China. There may have been more water towns today if it were not for the cultural revolution. 
If the town is original they will most likely be gated and will charge a fee at the door. 

I do really like going to these water towns. They are very beautiful and versatile! During the day they have a lot of family friendly events and at night they will have bars and pubs to visit. After a while I do admit, the water towns all start to look the same but after two years I still like to visit them once in a while. 

Eat your heart out Aaron. Hangzhou water town. 

Xin Xitang