June’s 618 shopping season is back in its favourite role as China’s annual retail loudhailer. The number attached to it may still flirt with ¥1 trillion, but the real story is less about the headline ...

Memory walked through Paris on Saturday as a small but determined crowd crossed the city in tribute to the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. But a quiet civic gesture instead became a public reminder ...

Taizhou is one of Zhejiang’s most practical cities, but it is also one of its most varied. It has long coastlines, island chains, deep mountain valleys and a private economy that has helped shape its ...

Crossing the Yangtze into Wuhu, many would not at first suspect they are entering one of Anhui’s most quietly consequential cities; a place where rice, river trade, old foreign links and modern ...

how on Earth did a Parisian house of luxury end up in a Suzhou courtroom over a milk tea logo? The answer is less glamorous than the brand's handbags and a lot more useful in a legal context than ...

Canals, train lines and conference halls have all had a hand in Jiaxing’s rise, but the city still starts with water. South Lake gave it national memory; silk gave it trade; and Wuzhen later gave it a ...

Few Zhejiang cities carry such an easy first impression and such a complicated life beneath it. Shaoxing looks like a place of canals, wine jars and old scholars; in practice it is also a hard-working ...

Silvery by nickname and stubborn by history, Bengbu still carries the feel of a city pulled into being by water, pearls and railways; yet beneath that old industrial skin, the so-called Pearl City is ...

Wenzhou is one of Zhejiang’s best-known cities, but it is not famous by accident. It has long been a place of family firms, overseas links, hard-edged manufacturing and a coastline that has pushed the ...

Jinhua is one of Zhejiang’s most useful surprises. It does not shout like Hangzhou or lean on a single headline-grabbing industry. Instead, it runs on markets, hardware, film sets and a stubbornly ...

Far off the Zhejiang coast, Zhoushan feels less like a single city than a working archipelago. Sea, shipping and salt air shape everything here; from the fishing docks to the temples on Putuo Mountain ...

High in the mountains of southwestern Zhejiang, Lishui does not try to look flat or easy. Here, forested slopes, river headwaters and scattered settlements mean distance has shaped habit and habit has ...