Now, Gin Tonic might be pleasant enough, but it's not on anybody tourist map. It might be a couple of thousand years old or so, but that's not exactly obvious. Most of it is a nondescript mass of cement and glass.
Unless you end up in the old town. I mentioned the old town before, I think, it's a couple of streets with traditional-ish houses and a flea market for all your perforated coin, Confucius statuettes and Mao paraphernalia needs.. But recently, in much nicer weather and a little more knowlege of the turf, I found there are some real hidden gems. The old town conceals some more street of very nicely kept (or fixed) old houses which have nothing to envy from the likes of Shaoxin. They organized as informal museums of sorts, with themes more or less deliberately chosen. Funnily enough, it feels a bit like Pompei, but a Pompei in which people still come and go and do stuff.
This is the courtyard of the calligrapher's house. The house itself is some kind of calligraphy museum, with one of the masters there drinking tea and eating, and his wife trying to sell you his works.
Here's the calligrapy master and his acolytes in action.
This is the innter courtyard of the ghost's house. I call it the ghost's house because it's inhabited by a noble-looking fellow who habits one room where he has traditional furnitre and a flat screen tv. He seems like a kind of genie of the place. There was also a rooster in the garden, he didn't seem very happy to have visitors.
The door to another house. This was all about ceramic, if I remember correctly.
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