Shaoxing

The water towns around Shanghai have mostly become open-air museums. Shaoxing has the same canals and stone bridges and never stopped being a working city, so the laundry hangs over the water and the boatmen paddle with their feet because that is how it is done. The old centre is small enough to walk in a morning and interesting enough to stay two nights.

Lu Xun grew up here and his house, school and the garden he wrote about are open and free. Shen Garden is where the poet Lu You met his lost wife. The Orchid Pavilion, outside town, is where Wang Xizhi wrote the most famous piece of calligraphy in the language in 353.

Then there is the wine: amber, warm in winter, drunk from bowls with fennel beans. Yellow wine has been made here for two and a half thousand years. Spring and autumn are the seasons; summer is hot and wet.

Shaoxing North is on the high-speed line: Hangzhou East in about 20 minutes, Shanghai Hongqiao in about an hour and 20. From the station, metro line 1 runs into the old town in about 40 minutes and connects at the other end with Hangzhou's metro. The old Shaoxing station near the centre serves slower trains. Fly to Hangzhou (HGH).

Yellow wine with fennel beans, as Kong Yiji ordered them, at the Xianheng Tavern. Stinky tofu and fermented amaranth stalks, the town's two famous smells. Meigancai dried mustard greens steamed with pork belly, drunken chicken, and river shrimp. The old street lanes have small places with three tables and the family cooking.