The Kumkuat Korner

Postal Officer in full gear or as we call them now, the mail man. On my visit to the Water Town of Zhujiajiao, I got lost walking through the cobbled lonely alleyways. I stumbled upon a little piece of history that caught my interest and inspired me to write a separate post on this.  In the far, far corner of the alley, I saw a brick building that seemed a little out of place next to the more traditional buildings around it. With my curiosity peaked, I went inside and was greeted by a lowly lit miniature museum.  This museum documented the history and evolution of China's postal system!  This building I was in appeared, to be an old post office long ago retired. This post office was founded in the late 1800s under the reign of Emperor Tongzhi during the Qing Dynasty and was one of the 13 official post offices of the Shanghai region!  Fun fact:   China is among the countries  with earliest sort-of postal service (although i...

Nearly 26 miles away from Shanghai is a small city called Zhujiajiao. (It's pronounced j ew jeeah jee-ah-ow)  This lovely little water town is similar to one of my favorite cities in China, Suzhou. I wrote a post about that place that can be read here if you're interested. How did I even get here? The vast subway system makes it quite affordable to move from one side of town to the another. So from my hotel, I took a couple lines down and got off on line 8 on the stop called Dashijie. Upon exiting and just around the corner from the little park across the street from the metro stop, there's a the bus station that takes passengers from Downtown Shanghai all the way to the ancient city of Zhujiajiao. How much did this cost? A one way trip to this lovely water town cost only 12 yuan which is nearly two dollars. Super cheap! The bus ride took roughly an hour and when I asked the bus driver (in my broken Chinese) when the last left the station in Zhujiajiao, he told me...