Wu Guanzhong praised Zhouzhuang as a place that “gathers together the beauty of China’s waterscapes in one place”. He first came to Zhouzhuang in 1985, drafting A View of Zhouzhuang, which he later exhibited at his exhibition at the Musée Cernuschi in Paris in 1993, along with two other sketches of China’s Jiangnan region. This painting was developed from this particular draft as it seems to have been the only one in the 1980s to have a similar composition to this ink and colour painting.

The painting depicts a large house by the side of a river, with its imposing white façade occupying a large portion of the picture and its windows and doorways reduced to small dark blocks. The wall has been divided by black and white planes, providing a strong sense of contrast in a manner similar to another of Wu’s classic depictions of China’s Jiangnan region, A Pair of Swallows. In this work, canopied wupeng boats are docked beneath the wall, their slanted punts reflected in the water. The boatmen rendered in colour dots and the black arc of the tiled roof break up the regularity of the large white structure to add a breath of life into the composition. The stillness of the walls together with the movement of the boats perfectly encapsulate the essence of a waterfront town.