Things to do in Hangzhou

Nature · Immediately west of the city centre

A UNESCO-inscribed cultural landscape of causeways, islands, pagodas and tea hills, free to enter and about fifteen kilometres to walk around.

Local tip: Everyone goes to the Su Causeway. The quiet half is the western shore around Yanggong Causeway and the hills behind it — same lake, a tenth of the people. Hangzhou removed the entrance fee in 2002 and it has stayed free ever since, which is why locals genuinely use it every day.

Nature · The hills immediately west of the lake

Working tea villages — Longjing, Meijiawu, Manjuelong — on terraced hillsides ten minutes from the city.

Local tip: Go in late March or early April for the pre-Qingming harvest, when the price of the first picking is genuinely astonishing and the whole hillside is working. The rest of the year the walking trails between the villages are empty and beautiful.

Neighborhood · Shangcheng, at the foot of Wushan hill

The restored Qing commercial street below Wushan, with traditional pharmacies, silk shops and snack stalls.

Local tip: Hefang Street itself is a tourist strip. The Hu Qingyu Tang traditional pharmacy behind it is not — it is a working Qing-dynasty medicine hall with a museum attached, and the smell of the dispensary alone is worth the visit.

Culture · Yuhang, north-west, near the tech campuses

A 5,000-year-old walled city with monumental water management, inscribed by UNESCO in 2019 and largely unknown outside China.

Local tip: This is the strongest archaeological case for Chinese state formation before the dynastic records, and the site museum is genuinely excellent. It is fifteen minutes from Alibaba's campus and almost nobody who works there has been.

Landmark · Jianggan, on the Qiantang river

The modern CBD across the river — where Hangzhou put its towers, since West Lake's heritage protection means they cannot go near the lake.

Local tip: The river hosts the Qiantang tidal bore, one of the largest in the world, which surges upstream on high tides around the eighth lunar month. Locals check the tide tables; the best viewing is downstream at Yanguan in Haining rather than in the city.

Culture · Gongshu, northern Hangzhou

The southern terminus of the Grand Canal, with restored warehouse districts, canal boats and a working temple beside the water.

Local tip: The Grand Canal ended here after fifteen hundred years and a millennium of grain barges, and it is now a quiet linear park you can walk or take a public canal boat along for the price of a metro ticket. Almost every visitor spends all their time at the lake and never comes north.