Experience the best of Shaoxing

Shaoxing lies in Zhejiang province, laced with canals and arched stone bridges, and the black-awning wupeng boats still ply the waterways of the old town. Lu Xun, the modern Chinese writer, was born here in 1881, and his family home and the Three Flavours Study, where he went to school, stand a short walk apart in a preserved quarter.

At the Orchid Pavilion, the calligrapher Wang Xizhi hosted a poetry party in AD 353 and wrote his famous preface, and the gardens still follow the idea of a winding stream for floating wine cups. The Mausoleum of Yu the Great, the legendary tamer of floods, lies at the foot of Kuaiji Mountain, and Shen Garden is linked with a Song-dynasty love poem by Lu You.

Shaoxing huangjiu, a golden rice wine aged in clay jars, is the city's famous drink and a cooking wine across China. It is taken warm with aniseed-flavoured broad beans, as in one of Lu Xun's best-known stories, alongside pickled vegetables, drunken chicken and stinky tofu. Spring rain and the plum rains of early summer feed the canals.