A Holiday Destination That Still Feels Uncrowded – Luzhi Ancient Town

People really do skip Luzhi a lot during holidays and it is kind of understandable. It is not as famous or as polished as Tongli or Wuzhen. But if you do not set the bar too high it is pretty charming and the best part is that there is no entrance fee.

There are two popular stories about where the name “Luzhi” came from. One says it comes from the layout of the waterways. The town has three horizontal and three vertical canals six straight rivers in total. When you look down from above the pattern is said to resemble the old character “甪”. The other story says there was once a mythical creature called a Luduan that flew over Cheng Lake on the outskirts of Luzhi water town. It saw that the local people were honest kind and sincere so it decided to settle by the lake. Whenever a boat capsized or someone fell into the water the Luduan would fly over carry the person back to shore and even drag the sunken boat to safety. From then on the Cheng Lake area supposedly enjoyed gentle weather and was spared from natural disasters. Legend also says the Luduan can travel eighteen thousand li in a day understands all languages and only appears beside wise and virtuous rulers. Today at the main gate of Luzhi Ancient Town you can still see a statue of this creature that looks a bit like a qilin with a single horn on its forehead.

Inside the town most of the space is taken up by shops and old residences all linked by narrow lanes. Many of the traditional houses are deep courtyard compounds with three five or even six sections. The deepest ones reach seven sections. Wandering through them you quickly get the feeling that you are walking through endless old alleys and hidden homes in a Suzhou old town.

The Luzhi Historical Relics Museum is now almost abandoned. Bushes have grown up in front of the doors and although the signs are still there you cannot actually get inside. According to the introduction the museum used to display precious artifacts that tell the story of this Suzhou water town over the course of more than a thousand years. There were different types of ancient wells, carbonized rice and everyday objects including a bird shaped pottery vessel with a handle from the Liangzhu period and a bronze lamp from the Eastern Zhou dynasty.

Baosheng Temple was first built in the second year of the Tianjian era of the Liang dynasty in the year 503. The well pavilion in front of the temple gate was even used as a filming location for Dream of the Red Chamber. The most famous treasures inside the temple are the Arhat wall sculptures which are said to have been created by Yang Huizhi a master sculptor of the Tang dynasty. Each arhat has a distinct expression and vivid lifelike details so the works were listed in the very first group of nationally protected cultural relics. At its peak Baosheng Temple was so large that it took up almost half of Luzhi town.

On the west side of Baosheng Temple stands the Ye Shengtao Memorial Hall built on the former site of the Fifth Higher Primary School of Wu County. Ye Shengtao spent important years of his writing and teaching career here so you can find traces of him in many corners of Luzhi ancient town. The modern Chinese subject name “Yuwen” also came from him. Spoken language is “Yu” written language is “Wen” and he believed you should value both so he combined them into one term. After the founding of the People’s Republic he also helped draft the national Chinese language curriculum standards.

Today the memorial hall is an off campus education base for schools in Jiangsu Province. It is easy to picture Ye Shengtao here in those years leading his students as they plant vegetables and melons in the school yard with the quiet slow rhythm of this Jiangnan water town unfolding all around them in Luzhi town.