HANGZHOU
Marco Polo described Hangzhou as “without a doubt the finest and most splendid city in the world”, and today it is still one of the prettiest in China, its coal-burning factories shuttered in the late 1990s and trees planted on much of its land—a vast urban garden, with one of China’s largest Buddhist temple complexes nestled in a valley, and a strong economy driven by e-commerce and IT. Alibaba is headquartered here, as is Huawei.
China’s movers and shakers, such as Alibaba’s Jack Ma, have homes on the shores of West Lake, and they’re channelling, perhaps, the literati of centuries past, the gentlemen-scholars who spent their leisure time writing poetry, painting, and conversing in Hangzhou’s gardens and teahouses. I was ready—I arrived for the day by bullet train from Shanghai— for at least a quick taste of that.
There was something almost prelapsarian about the Dragon Well Manor restaurant, set amid the hills and tea plantations on Hangzhou’s outskirts. I walked towards its eight pavilions and terraces— private dining rooms only, the way most Chinese like it, decorated in minimalist Ming dynasty style—over winding paths and small stone bridges, next to strands of bamboo and bonsai trees, skirting little streams and lily pad-covered ponds.
The restaurant’s owner, Dai Jianjun, a wealthy former businessman, has made it his mission to serve the delicate cuisine of the so-called Lower Yangtze region using only local, organic, seasonal, and often foraged ingredients, which are prepared according to the principles of traditional Chinese medicine. The place, said to be China’s first “destination” restaurant, has a cult following, so reserve well in advance.
After 13 tasty amuse-bouches—there is no menu, you are presented with the chef’s inspirations of that day—I ate soy milk soup with baby shrimp; pork belly with eggs and steamed sprouts; hairy crab, sea cucumber, and bamboo shoots with salted ham; fish soup with pickled cabbage; sticky rice with nuts and red bean sauce; and rice cake with brown sugar. There was much more, but I was too stupefied to write it down and just collapsed outside on my private terrace to listen, as I imagine the literati would have, to birdsong.
West Lake, framed by hills and dotted with pavilions, was lovely. “I was worried you might not like it,” my guide, Aaron Wang, said, “Some foreigners don’t get it. It’s the China of watercolour paintings, not green but sort of grey.” It was a subtle canvas against which a swath of pink from an early blooming plum tree, or a girl’s bright red coat as she walked under weeping willows, were all the more memorable and stirring. At the Mei Jia Wu tea village, a stern but pink-cheeked lady with glowing skin gave me a lecture about the history of tea in China and the antioxidant qualities of the village’s Dragon Well green tea, the country’s most prized—and accordingly priced—leaves. At the end, I parted happily with an extraordinary amount of cash for a year’s supply— you keep it frozen—of the top variety, Emperor’s Tea, which is culled from the first spring harvest. About tea bags, even ones labeled organic, she pronounced, “That’s junk, dust left over from the harvesting process. Real tea is powerful medicine.”