In the 1160s a consort of the Xiaozong emperor died while travelling through here. Rather than have her taken home she was buried in the lake, and the town was renamed after the grave. It kept that name for eight hundred and eighty years.
Jinxi sits south of Kunshan, about seventy kilometres and an hour and a half by car from Shanghai. Zhouzhuang, which gets several million visitors a year, is twenty minutes up the road. Jinxi does not, and that is the reason to come.
The streets are free to walk. Only the museums inside the town are ticketed, and you can buy that on arrival.
The grave in the lake
The tomb sits on a mound in Wubao Lake, reached by a single stone causeway. There is no bridge and no boat landing. Look for the reeds, because the mound is under them and from the shore you can easily miss it.
In eight hundred years the water has never covered it, however high the lake has risen. It was repaired in 1992 and has been a protected monument since 1997.
Xiaozong was emperor of a dynasty that had already lost the north of China. He ordered a temple built in a small town for a woman who died on a journey, and the town then carried her grave's name for nearly nine centuries. Very few places in China are named after a single burial for that long.
The temple that took forty years
Lianchi Temple was begun in the 1160s by imperial order and finished in 1203. That is about forty years for a temple that is not large.
Forty years of work is not visible in the size of it, which is how a small town builds: slowly, and only as the money arrives. The old lotus pond beside it is from the same decades.
This is also the quietest entrance to any of the water towns near Shanghai. Standing at the pond and counting the people is the fastest way to understand what makes Jinxi different from its neighbour.
The pavilion, and what a town wants
Wenchang Pavilion is the tallest old building in the town and the best place to see the lake from. Go up if you can manage the stairs: the mound in the lake reads clearly from the top and barely at all from the shore.
Every town in this region has one of these. It is a shrine to the god of examinations. A small town could not build a garden, so what it built instead was a tower asking for one of its sons to pass the examination and get out.
It is the same ambition that produced the Suzhou gardens, at a different budget.
The Ten-Arch Bridge
Ming dynasty, ten arches on nine piers, fifty-two metres long. People here call it the little Baodai Bridge, after the long bridge at Suzhou.
Stand in the middle and look back. Town on one side, lake and grave on the other; it is the only spot where you get both at once.
A bridge this long in a town this small is a statement about traffic rather than beauty. Everything moved by water, and this crossing is where the lake met the canals.
Bricks, kilns, and the Forbidden City
The kiln trade here began in the Ming and peaked in the Qing. The local saying is thirty-six bridges and seventy-two kilns: a water town with clay, fuel and boats has everything a brickworks needs.
The Museum of Ancient Bricks and Tiles is the only one of its kind in the country. Its main hall is built in the shape of a kiln, so you walk inside one, and the collection runs from Neolithic brick through to Qing floor pavers.
Those big square pavers are the gold bricks that floor the Forbidden City. If you have been to Beijing, you have walked on this town's product.
This was an industrial town. The prettiness is a by-product, which is true of most of what you see here.
The bridges and the small museums
Twenty-six old bridges survive, mostly Ming and Qing, which is a high count for a town this size. Look at the stone: different bridges, different quarries, different centuries, and the wear on the steps tells you which were working crossings.
Bridges were funded by families and named for whatever the donor wanted said, so reading the names in order is a way of reading who had money here, and when.
The small museums opened from the 1990s onwards. They sit in ordinary houses, there is no museum building, and the collections belong to people rather than the state. Jinxi calls itself the home of China's folk museums and the count supports it.
The reason they are here is commercial. Zhouzhuang had the fame, so Jinxi could not compete on scenery and offered cheap space to private collectors instead. That strategy is why the streets are quiet.
The covered walkway
The covered walkway along the canal is a Qing form in these towns, rebuilt many times over. A roof over the street meant shops could trade in the rain and boats could unload dry.
It is not a picturesque feature. It is a working one that happens to photograph well.
Questions people ask
Do you need a ticket for Jinxi?
Not to walk the town, which is free and open. A combined ticket covers the museums inside it, including the brick and tile museum, and you can buy it on arrival without booking.
How long do you need in Jinxi?
Two to three hours covers the town, the lake shore and one or two of the museums.
How do you get to Jinxi from Shanghai?
About seventy kilometres, an hour and a half by car. Zhouzhuang is twenty minutes further north, so the two are often combined.
Is Jinxi better than Zhouzhuang?
They are different. Zhouzhuang is famous and takes several million visitors a year; Jinxi is quiet and its draw is the lake, the grave and a dozen small private museums. If crowds are what you are trying to avoid, Jinxi is the answer.
What are the opening hours?
08:00 to 17:00 from 1 April to 31 October, and 08:00 to 16:30 from 1 November to 31 March.
What is the water tomb?
The grave of a consort of the Xiaozong emperor, who died travelling through here in the 1160s and was buried on a mound in the lake. The town was named after it for eight hundred and eighty years.
Why is there a brick museum in a water town?
Jinxi was a kiln town. Clay, fuel and boats are everything a brickworks needs, and the large square floor pavers made here were used in the Forbidden City.
Ticket coverage and opening hours last checked 2026-09. Both change from year to year, so confirm on the day if the timing is tight.
Nearby, and worth pairing
Plan the rest of the trip
Jinxi is the canal town we suggest when you would rather not spend the morning in a crowd. We run it as a private day from Shanghai
See the day