Tourists from home and abroad take a boat tour in Zhujiajiao.
“A Drop from the Sky,” produced by renowned composer and conductor Tan Dun, is staged at Zhujiajiao Ancient Town’s Water Heavens through July 5.
The show is divided into four acts, with a total duration of approximately 63 minutes. Each act presents a dialogue between music and space in different forms. It is an artistic work that integrates architecture, music, nature, and Eastern philosophy.
Water flows from the river into the house, and the audience sits around a pool of water – that is the “Water Heavens.”
Centered around the hall, the performance will create an immersive audiovisual feast through the cross-disciplinary interaction of water, architecture, and musical instruments.
A traditional Chinese opera performance wows tourists.
A splendid boat tour
Zhujiajiao has been turned into a smart tourist attraction with efforts in full swing to make it the first stop for Shanghai’s ancient town tourism, showcasing Jiangnan (the region south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River) culture.
In the first quarter of this year, the ancient town was estimated to have received 1.46 million visits by tourists, a year-on-year increase of 6.78 percent. These included about 291,200 foreign travelers, up 15.77 percent from the same period last year.
Zhujiajiao, known as the “Jiangnan Pearl,” is Shanghai’s most intact historical and cultural town.
A traditional Chinese opera show wows audience.
Built along the river, it boasts Kezhi Garden with exquisite Jiangnan gardening architecture, Fangsheng Bridge, the longest, largest, and highest five-arched bridge in Shanghai, and the Qing Post Office, one of China’s earliest postal institutions.
This year, the scenic area will further improve tourism quality over landscape, cultural essence exploration, product design, facilities, and services, deepen the adaptive reuse of ancient buildings and old houses, and explore and introduce diverse business formats to boost visitor satisfaction.
On Wednesday, more than 50 vloggers of Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok visited Zhujiajiao during the three-day 2025 Visa GenVisa Creator Summit.
A photo moment
The bustling scene in Zhujiajiao
They watched the Kunqu Opera "The Peony Pavilion"at Kezhi Garden, took a boat tour on Caogang River, admired ancient architecture, enjoyed tea and pingtan (storytelling and singing in the Suzhou dialect) at the Jiangnan No.1 Teahouse, and experienced intangible cultural heritage activities like bianlian, or face changing, and Qingpu straw plaiting, fully experiencing the unique charm of the Jiangnan ancient town.
Ler from South Korea visiting Shanghai for the first time.
“I think Zhujiajiao Ancient Town is fantastic and will definitely recommend it to others. The natural environment, architecture, and food all fascinated me, and photos taken here turned out great.”