In the middle of Binjiang, the hyper modern district of high rise apartments and hi-tech offices in Hangzhou, where I live, sits the small canal village (it’s not even big enough to be a town) of Xixing. Once a thriving water-based entrepôt feeding the trade on the Grand Canal - which ran all the way to Beijing - river rerouting saw it stagnate, but not evaporate. Today, it’s one of my favourite places to take visitors, a reminder that life in China’s biggest cities can still be lived in a different, slower, way.