Content: Oxcart riding, rice flour milling, waterwheel pedaling, manual paper making, tea picking, bamboo raft floating, living under the same roof and eating at the same table with farmers.
In the city of Fuyang 38 km away from Hangzhou there is a "monk" village, which is one of the typical villages in the modern countryside of China where peasants have become rich through their hard labor. Though living in affluence, many households here have maintained traditional ways of production and life-style to some extent. Visitors can participate in activities such as oxcart riding, watching and trying manual paper making, pushing stone mills, weeding rice paddies, tea picking, and bamboo raft floating, to obtain a "real Chinese experience". They can also spend a day here living with ordinary farmers, and go shadowboxing, sword practicing, playing card games and chess, chatting, shopping in free markets of agricultural products, cooking in a Chinese way, visiting knitting workshops, living under the same roof and eating at the same table with farmers, and having parties with them.
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Wedding ceremonies of the "nine surname" fishers on the Xin'an River.
Once upon a time on the Xin'an River there lived fishers with nine family names: Chen, Qian, Lin, Yuan, Sun, Ye, Xu, Li and He.
Legend says that the ancestors of these "nine surname" fishers once followed Chen Youliang to fight Zhu Yuanzhangfor the ruling power over the country. With the defeat of Chen, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of Ming Dynasty demoted the folks as "untouchable fisher folks" and drove them to the river, with a decree forbidding them to take residence other than their boats, to participate in local and imperial examinations, and to intermarry people living on land. They have thus lived in such a unique way since then, with the water-borne wedding ceremony being one typical aspect of their lifestyles.