Shanghai Pathways

The Chinese port city of Zhenjiang is situated on the Yangtze River, just west of Shanghai. It is a historical city with profound culture and beautiful natural scenery.

The smell of vinegar will greet you when you enter into Zhenjiang Hengshun Vinegar Factory, founded in the Qing Dynasty (1840), which is the cradle of Chinese vinegar industry, listed as National Intangible Cultural Heritage. To be produced, it needs more than 40 procedures and takes over 60 days. Here, you can learn about the artistry of making vinegar and witness the birth of this “acid sauce”.

We will take a look at the historical Xijin Ferry Project which received UNESCO Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation. It was built in the Six Dynasties period (222-589), it possessed complete ferry functions and for a long time it was a hub of water transport connecting the south and north of China. Over there we will enjoy Zhenjiang guo gai mian 镇江锅盖面, or pot lid noodles, China's top 10 popular noodles. It’s the Holy Grail for foodies, that rarely attained combination of a tasty, memorable, inexpensive meal in a place that no-one else seems to have discovered except you and the local neighbourhood customers, who all want to keep it that way.

Pearl Buck, most famously known as the Nobel Prize winning author of The Good Earth, grew up in Zhenjiang at the turn of the 20th century, the daughter of a didactic Presbyterian missionary. Over the course of her literary, political and philanthropic-minded career, she reshaped the way Americans perceived the Chinese, we will visit her childhood home in the end.