The grounds are littered with nuggets of dynastic-era brick and even piles of catapult ammunition, stones believed to have remained untouched since they were heaped there centuries ago for the purpose of shattering the ranks of Wu soldiers.

While Grand Castle was abandoned to crumble with the end of war, the nearest settlement it guarded, Sanhe (Three Rivers) city, maintained its functionality until the present day. Consequently, most of the 33,000 inhabitants of the 4.7-sq-km city are descendents of those who founded the community 2,500 years ago.

Sanhe's ancestral citizenry left intact what locals call the "Eight Ancient Relics" - rivers, bridges, villages surrounded by water, streets, teahouses, residences, temple stages and battlefields. The community takes its name from the three waterways that sunder its land - the Hangbu, Fengle and Xiaonan rivers.

Residents smile through the rain in Sanhe, an ancient town preserved in its traditional state. (By Jonah m. Kessel)

A villager walks through the ancient city of Sanhe.(By Jonah m. Kessel)

These watercourses sire an abundance of freshwater aquatic life, and Sanhe's streets are lined with plastic tubs that roil with eels, shrimps and loaches. The local saying goes: "For a tour, you must go to Huangshan Mountain. To eat, you must come to Sanhe."

The plentitude of water and lack of altitude have a great influence on local life in ways besides providing prolific breeding grounds for aquaculture.

Practically every townsperson in the rainy settlement owns galoshes, and umbrella-jams are commonplace in the narrow alleyways - locally known as "one-person", "two-person" and "three-person" lanes, according to the number of side-by-side pedestrians they can accommodate.

And the high precipitation levels and low topography ultimately render Sanhe prone to flooding. A 1991 flashflood inundated the city with 14.5 meters of water for 73 days.