Tongli, water village.

Tongli was recommended by my Chinese tutor Min as having beautiful scenery, gardens, and delicious pork leg.  Say no more.  

We took the bus there from Shanghai, about two hours, and paid our 80RMB admission to get into the village.  It's set up as a tourist spot, but was actually very nice despite all that.  You get a ticket with the list of sites on it and as you go to each one, you get a hole punch, like the scavenger hunt in a corn maze.

Tongli was apparently the home of some wealthy officials who built these opulent homes with courtyards and multiple buildings and koi ponds and sensuous limestone gardens and moonlight-viewing stone terraces.  Pretty neat, if you are into fancy house tours and gardens.  The fact that the old town is basically a pedestrian mall keeps it quiet and pleasantly walkable.

Also featured in Tongli is the Chinese Sex Culture Museum which was 20 kuai extra but we couldn't resist.  It turned out to be pretty unremarkable, although I was surprised by the mere existence of paintings (on china!) of 18th century Chinese lesbians. Unfortunately for yours truly, not a major part of the exhibit.

The next day we got up before 6 - still a little jetlagged and the sun rises very early in eastern China these days - and went out for a walk.  We got to see a little more of actual life because we came around from the back side, caught a local street market with vegetables and seafood and live poultry, which was probably the most fun for me. Women washing clothes in the river and hidden flower and vegetable gardens.  All these photos are from that morning because my camera was out of juice the day before.