Hangzhou

A county was established at the site under the Qin, but the city's rise began when the Sui dynasty completed the Grand Canal in the early 7th century and made Hangzhou its southern terminus, linking the rice and silk of the delta with the northern capitals. The Tang official Bai Juyi, governor in the 820s, had the lake dredged and an embankment built; two centuries later the poet Su Shi did the same, and the two causeways still carry their names.

Between 907 and 978 Hangzhou was the capital of the small kingdom of Wuyue, whose rulers built pagodas, temples and a seawall against the Qiantang tides. Its greatest period followed the Jurchen conquest of northern China, when the Song court fled south and made the city its capital, called Lin'an, from 1138. For a century and a half it was among the largest and richest cities in the world, crowded inside its walls with markets, theatres and restaurants; Marco Polo described it, as Kinsai, in astonished terms.

Silk weaving, tea and canal trade kept the city prosperous under the Ming and Qing, and the emperors of the 18th century visited the lake repeatedly. The Taiping war of the 1860s brought siege, fire and enormous loss of life, from which Hangzhou recovered slowly. Industry arrived in the 20th century, and since the 1990s the city has grown into a centre of e-commerce and software, home to Alibaba, host of the eleventh G20 summit in 2016 and of the Asian Games.

No Chinese city is more tied to a single view. West Lake has been painted, versified and catalogued for a thousand years, down to a fixed list of ten scenes — dawn on the Su Causeway in spring, the moon over the three pools, snow on the Broken Bridge — that visitors still tick off. The Legend of the White Snake, in which a snake spirit takes human form, falls in love at the Broken Bridge and is imprisoned beneath Leifeng Pagoda, is set here and is known to every Chinese schoolchild.

Tea is the second thread. Longjing, the pan-roasted green tea grown in the hills behind the lake, has been a tribute tea since the Qing, and drinking it properly — in a tall glass, leaves floating, water poured off the boil — is part of local manners. Silk is the third: Hangzhou has woven and traded it for more than a millennium, and its brocades, fans and paper umbrellas are the classic souvenirs.

The arts are strongly represented. The Xiling Seal Art Society has kept seal carving and calligraphy alive on Gushan island since 1904, the China Academy of Art trains painters and designers, and Yue opera, sung in a Zhejiang dialect with women often playing the male roles, draws devoted audiences. Residents speak a Wu dialect among themselves, are famously attached to their lake, and treat evening walks, tea houses and osmanthus season as civic rituals.

About 12.5 million people live in the municipality, which reaches far beyond the lake into farmland, hills and industrial districts. The population has grown quickly with arrivals from across China drawn by the technology sector, and housing costs are among the highest outside Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

The economy is unusually concentrated in digital business: Alibaba and its payments affiliate are based here, with a dense cluster of e-commerce, software, games and logistics firms in the western and eastern suburbs, alongside older strengths in silk and textiles, chemicals, machinery and tourism. The city is a national test bed for cashless payment, delivery apps and traffic-management systems, which makes ordinary life smooth for residents and occasionally baffling for visitors without a Chinese phone.

Daily rhythms are shaped by the lake and the commute. Retired residents walk, sing and exercise on the shore in the early morning; office workers fill the metro; families take to the causeways and the tea hills at weekends, and traffic into the scenic area is restricted at busy times. Delivery riders are everywhere. The strains people discuss are long working hours in the technology firms, property prices, and the pressure that mass tourism puts on the lake and the villages around it.

Hangzhou cooking belongs to the Zhejiang school: light, slightly sweet, built on river fish, freshwater shrimp, bamboo shoots and rice wine rather than heat. Dongpo pork, cubes of belly braised slowly in wine, soy and sugar, is named after Su Shi, the poet-governor who gave the lake its long causeway. West Lake vinegar fish is a grass carp poached and served under a translucent sweet-and-sour sauce, and Longjing shrimp are small river shrimp stir-fried with fresh green tea leaves.

Other dishes trace the same landscape. Beggar's chicken is wrapped in lotus leaves and clay and baked whole; Song Sao fish broth is thickened and sharpened with vinegar in a recipe credited to a Song-dynasty cook; braised bamboo shoots with dried mustard greens comes from the hills; and pian'er chuan, noodles in broth with sliced pork, bamboo and greens, is the standard lunch. Sweet things lean on the local harvest — osmanthus in syrups, cakes and rice balls, lotus root powder whisked into a warm paste, and candied dates.

Tea is a food as much as a drink, and tea-house kitchens in the hill villages serve simple country dishes with their own leaf. The city also eats a great deal of Shanghai and Cantonese food, hotpot and the specialities of neighbouring Shaoxing, whose yellow rice wine, drunk warm, and pungent fermented dishes are common on Hangzhou tables.