Small b ridge,flowing stream and householde.

Ariver with one street.

    River network covers Shaoxing area densely and for this reason Shaoxing has a very famous name -"a land rich in river lets". Today, in Shaoxing area there are the Cao'e River, the Puyang River and the Jian Lake, all of which inflow into the Qiantang River; the East Zhejiang Channel crosses the north of Shaoxing area from the east to the west and communicates with the rivers flowing from the north to the south, forming a river system with high density of rivers in the northern plain of Shaoxing area. Consistently, Shaoxing has been very famous for her natural beauty of lakes and hills, as some verses describe: "The hills at Shaoxing are green and rivers clear for ever".

    With developed water conservancy facilities and good irrigation works, today's Shaoxing is called a land of swamps but she does not suffer from inundation nor watering. When the people selected the position for living together, the first thing that they thought was to be close to water and many folk houses face to a river, or are backed by a river or even span a river. According to statistics, over 80% of 2500 natural villages are close to rivers or ponds. In Shaoxing, river streets, river lanes, river villages can be found everywhere. For Shaoxing people, rivers are important productive factor as well as communications net and organic component of housing conditions.

    Shaoxing traditional dwellings were generally built along rivers. According to the relations between land and water communication systems, there are three cases: "a river with two streets", "a river with one street" and "a river without any street". In towns with dense population, the total depth of a tairnen was generally equal to the width of the building block close to the river. The architectural layout of a taimen is as follows: the front door faces to street and the back door to the river. The front side of the house was used as a shop and the back side close to the river was for stocking goods through rivers. Traditional streets are narrow, suitable to walking; and the rivers to the backside of taimens were for sailing boats, like today's motorways. Seeing the highly efficient communication system of "men walk and boats navigate respectively along their own way" of old times, we have to wonder the ability and wisdom of ancient Yue people.

    In the planning structure of traditional dwellings of "a river with two streets" and "a river with one street", the streets were between folk houses and rivers, playing a role of land communications and serving as the entrance and exit of water transportation. The later function was realized by river wharves. There are a large number of river wharves at Shaoxing, very helpful to residents to use water in life and go on board. At some sections, every 4-5 meters there is a river-wharf averagely, how high is the density! At some prosperous sections in the past times, such as Keqiao and Anchang at Shaoxing, some long corridors with windows were set up for keeping out wind and rain. Looking at them from afar, the long corridors with dark color extend to the far, uniting the houses close to rivers.

    In traditional quarter of dwellings, rivers were inseparable with bridges. Shaoxing has a great number of bridges distributed over wide areas. The Map of Streets at Shaoxing Prefecture Town drawn in 1892 shows that there were 229 bridges at Shaoxing Town, every five steps there was a stone-bridge and every ten steps, an arch-bridge. It is said that: "There is not a town without bridge, not a road without bridge and not a village without bridge". Now, Shaoxing is one of the areas which have kept the most kinds and quantity of ancient bridges, including wood-beam bridges, wood-arch bridges, stone-beam bridges, polygonal bridges, semi-round stone-arch bridges, U-shaped bridges and elliptoid stone-arch bridges, etc. which constitute a complete system of ancient bridges. So Shaoxing is called a "museum of Chinese ancient bridges".

    In distribution, Shaoxing's bridges and buildings compose an organic entirety. For example, a bridge like Chinese character (eight), located at the east of Shaoxing Town and built in the Song Dynasty, is the earliest urban bridge existing now in China: both sides of the bridge inclines face to face, like a Chinese character , so called Bali (eight) Bridge. The whole bridge spans three rivers and links three streets, being a real crossroads in ancient times. It is a rare design, because the designer solved the problem of communication better on the one hand, and did not occupied many land used for building houses on the other hand. The other example is a small stone bridge at Anchang; an approach bridge at one side of this bridge extends into two folk houses on the bank; viewing from the opposite bank, the form and colors of the houses are very harmonious, the houses are like bridge towers, merging into one organic whole with the bridge.