The 2 of us are planning a day trip to a water village and are comfortable with going by bus. We are looking at Nanxun or Zhujiajiao. I looked up previous Fodor forums for info but it all seems many years old. Anyone got any current views on these villages. We've chosen these as being less likely to be totally crowded on a weekday.

Nanxun is better if you would like to visit such water town during weekend; Zhujijiao is full of tourists during weekend or holiday. If you would like to take a bus, take bus from Shanghai South Long-distance bus station, which takes 2 hours to Nanxun; and the last bus back to Shanghai will be at 18:00

Thanks, Anna. There's often a toss-up when trying to see a place that is less touristy, often the places are popular because they are 'the best' in some way. Is there any other water village you would suggest. I guess we want authenticity and not-so-crowded an experience. We have a whole day.

You are correct on the toss-up, it's a hard balance to achieve both. If you want to have another one to consider, check out Tongli.

Thanks Shanghainese, I've checked out Tongli and typically, when someone goes to the effort to post a review it turns out that that place is their favourite. The general opinion seems to be that it is less crowded so we've decided to go there. I assume it's on a bus route from Shanghai?

Fast train to Suzhou then a bus from the train station to Tongli. If you haven't been to Suzhou, leave Shanghai early, do Suzhou in the morning, get to Tongli for lunch and spend some time in the afternoon there.

thanks, that's exactly what we'll do.