Peasant Painting, Water Towns and Wine Tasting

November 16

The Talsma foursome has an early departure as we meet our tour guides, Michael and Tracy, at the Marriott Hotel for a day trip to a Peasant Painting Village and the water town of Fengjing. We notice a shop across the street from the Marriott specializing in the sale of 'C' words!

 14 bodies pile into a van leaving Shanghai at 8:30 am, it is a 90 minute drive to our destination.

The peasant painting village was initially established in the 1970's as part of the Chinese 'back to the country side' movement. In this area the movement was led by Wu Tongzhang, a classical painter.  Wu realized that the Jinshans peasants had artistic aptitude and he made it his mission to teach them to paint.

The artists cultivated a distinctive artistic style.

  Mainly older women took to painting the scenes around them, with subjects commonly including children, animals, festivals, harvests and rural landscapes. 

The style is renowned for its use of strong colors, and at first glance seem crudely drawn, as if by the hand of a child.  

The paintings are called is Jinshan folk art and has similarities in style to Picasso.

Walking through the village

We have lunch in the water town of Fengjing. 

  The town has a history of 1500 years and boasts 52 bridges.

 We spend the afternoon walking through the town,

 visiting the museum of a local cartoonist,

the complex of what was a working commune in the Mao times

 and an air raid shelter that was built in 1969.

At 4 pm we load ourselves back into the van and what was a 90 minute ride coming out to the village turns into a 2 1/2 hour return trip.  The traffic is very heavy and it is raining.

Once again Bruce finds and delivers us to our Shanghai home and we head to an Australian

wine tasting event  held in Shanghai Tower.   

This was our last full day of being Chinese.  Tomorrow the packing begins!