Boating with Buddha in Hangzhou

There's no better introduction to Hangzhou, China's sixth largest city, two hours' drive from Shanghai, than watching the sun rise over the shores of its wide West Lake from the surrounding hills. Standing among the wild bamboo and sweet-smelling camphor trees it's easy to see why countless works of Chinese literature have been penned in its honour. There's even an old Chinese saying: 'Above there is heaven, below there is Hangzhou.'

Buddhist monks chose these shady hillsides, which sit above sprawling tea plantations, to build their temples, the first of which was constructed nearly 2,000 years ago. At the Yoo Fong temple (a more recent addition), every morning begins with an hour's prayer and occasionally the monks let guests in, not just to observe the ritual but to be part of it. Three huge golden buddhas sit cross-legged inside, the outer two very effeminate, I noticed, as we waited for the 20 monks (very on-trend in their bright orange robes) to take their positions.

Without a songsheet, we were instructed to copy their sounds and movements, which began with some genuflecting and bowing one's head towards the acid yellow pillow embroidered with a pink lotus flower at our feet. The chanting wasn't the melodic Gregorian kind, more a nasal drone, with little effort from the monks to articulate the words, if there were any. There followed the hollow dong of an upturned bell, some banging of a bass drum and the percussive thock of an instrument shaped like a toffee apple. After 20 minutes a tenor voice began to harmonise and the resulting music was rather pleasant; I even entered a kind of trance. Who knows how long it went on for; I hardly noticed as we began to process around the temple ten times to complete the ceremony.

To snap out of this religious fervour we drove down to the West Lake and clambered aboard a long boat quietly punted by a lady in a coolie hat. She took us beneath causeways and along the reedy banks where the locals were starting the day with t'ai chi and bicycle rides. We ate a breakfast of fresh fruit on board then headed by taxi to the Grand Canal Museum, built in honour of the longest man-made river in the world, which was started in the 5th century BC and is now over 1,000 miles long, stretching all the way to Beijing to the northeast. The museum celebrates the various wares that were traded up and down the canal, including fans, umbrellas, scissors and swords, arranging the artefacts chronologically to show their evolution. After that we stopped by the Medicine Museum, also a working pharmacy where people go to order desiccated roots, leaves and ground-up who-knows-what, all essential palliatives in the practice of Chinese herbal medicine.

Most interesting of all was the high-walled house of Hu Xueyan, a 19th-century rags-to-riches merchant who added 13 extra courtyards to his house, one each time he took a new concubine. In the middle of each square garden, surrounded by elaborate stained-glass doors, was a rockery replete with tunnels, caves and, depending how much he loved the concubine in question, possibly a fish pond.

We were staying out of town in the newly opened Banyan Tree hotel, a network of bridges, canals and triple-height-ceilinged villas built in the middle of the nearby wetlands - a tricky spot to build on but a peaceful and serene escape from Hangzhou (which has nearly as many people as London). It captures the essence of a Chinese canal town, as we'd seen described in the museum, and there's a spa with a long indoor pool and a glass-box Jacuzzi (so you feel like a fish in a tank). Its Bai Yun restaurant looks out on to a central pool and pagoda, a miniature version of the kind you find dotted around the West Lake.

There's a set menu of regional food in most of the restaurants in this area, involving local lake shrimp steamed over tea leaves, a sweet pork belly with a layer of fat so unctuous it's like treacle, and fish cooked in a sweet vinegary sauce. These are big, punchy flavours for the Western palette, but the 28 HuBin Road restaurant in the Hyatt Regency hotel on the lake shore did a great job in toning down the sweetness and making a Western-friendly take on the moreish pork.

At night the shores of the lake swarm with Chinese holidaymakers keen to drop into the Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and even British brands such as Aquascutum and Gieves & Hawkes boutiques, all open late to catch the burgeoning appetite for luxury goods.

Fortunately there was no toning down for Western tastes of the nightly light and water show on the lakefront, featuring 50ft-high jets of water and colourful beams of light set to classical music. What would those wistful ancient poets make of that I wondered.
The Ultimate Travel Company offers a four-night stay at Banyan Tree Hangzhou for £1,495 including Virgin Atlantic flights to Shanghai and private transfers (020 7386 4646; theultimate travelcompany.co.uk)