Carpenter's shop a showcase of local history

A cupboard filled with various types of china.

"It's made of shells. We have a lot of freshwater mussels in our rich waters. Besides using them for buttons, workers would grind the shells into thin slices to make windows."

Wuzhen is famous for its blue cloth with white designs. Yang takes a square piece down from the wall.

"Guess what it was used for," he says, smiling.

I shake my head again.

"Well, we all used this kind of cloth in the past," he tells another local old gentleman standing beside the counter. The old man agreed, watching Yang spread the cloth on the counter.

Yang puts a book inside the cloth and wraps it up. "When we were young, we were too poor to buy bags, so we used cloth to pack books."

After folding the cloth properly, Yang pinches a string of old red thread, fastens it around the book and puts a copper coin with a hole in the center to fix the two ends of the thread.

The package looks neat and elegant. Yang points at the white pattern on the blue backdrop of the cloth.

"Plums, red-crowned cranes and bamboo－three very meaningful symbols. The plum represents toughness. The crane refers to longevity. And bamboo means evergreen－blessings for young students," he says.