Yangzhou on foot: morning tea, salt-merchant gardens, and the lake a poem built

The first thing Yangzhou (扬州, Yángzhōu) asks of you is to sit down. By seven in the morning the tea houses along the old canal are already full: pale tea in squat pots, bamboo baskets stacked two high, and a room of retirees who have nowhere in particular to be. You order, then you wait, and the waiting is not a delay. It is the meal.

A city that begins at the tea table

Morning tea here is zǎochá (早茶), and it bears no resemblance to the standing, hurried breakfast of a working city. It is a sit-down meal that can hold two hours if you let it. At Fuchun (富春, Fùchūn), tucked down a narrow lane off Desheng Bridge (得胜桥, Déshèng Qiáo), the tea to ask for is kuilongzhu (魁龙珠), a house blend of three leaves poured from a tall copper kettle. The room is plain, the marble-topped tables are close together, and nobody rushes you toward the door.

Order the crab-roe soup dumpling (蟹黄汤包, xièhuáng tāngbāo) — one to a basket, so heavy with broth you draw it out through a thin straw before you touch the skin. Add the three-dice bun (三丁包, sāndīng bāo), chicken, pork and bamboo shoot folded into a single pleat, and dazhu gansi (大煮干丝), pressed tofu hand-sliced into threads finer than a matchstick and simmered pale in chicken stock. A full spread with a pot of tea still lands under 100 yuan a head. The kitchens wind down by one in the afternoon and the best baskets go earlier, so come hungry and come before nine.

East Gate, and the gardens salt paid for

Walk the tea off along Dongguan Street (东关街, Dōngguān Jiē), the old commercial spine that ran roughly a kilometre from the canal wharf to the East Gate. The paving is worn stone, the shopfronts sell dried goods, paper fans and Yangzhou's lacquer, and the crowds thin the moment you turn into a side lane. This street exists because of salt: for much of the Qing dynasty the merchants who held the imperial salt monopoly lived here, and they spent their fortunes on gardens instead of grand houses.

Ge Garden (个园, Gèyuán), a short turn off Dongguan Street, costs around 45 yuan and was built by the salt merchant Huang Zhiyun (黄至筠). Its name comes from the character 个, which looks like three bamboo leaves, and the courtyards are planted thick with the plant. The garden is best known for a rockery built to move you through the four seasons in a single loop — pale stone for spring, weathered grey for autumn, white quartz standing in for winter snow. He Garden (何园, Héyuán), a little south and about the same price, is later and more theatrical, wrapped in a two-storey covered walkway (复道回廊) that lets you circle the whole garden without once stepping into the rain.

The lake a poem built

By early afternoon head northwest to Slender West Lake (瘦西湖, Shòuxī Hú), so named because it is thin and winding where Hangzhou's famous lake is broad. Admission runs around 100 yuan, more in peak spring, and the ticket buys a slow shoreline walk under willows rather than a single view. The set piece is the Five Pavilion Bridge (五亭桥, Wǔtíng Qiáo), a low yellow-roofed span with fifteen arches said to catch fifteen moons on a clear autumn night, and beyond it the White Dagoba (白塔), modelled on the one in Beijing.

Spring is why the lake has a reputation at all. When the willows come green and the peach blossom opens in late March and April, the crowds arrive with them, drawn by a single line Li Bai wrote about sailing down to Yangzhou in the blossom-hazed third month.

烟花三月下扬州。

If you are here for the qionghua (琼花, qiónghuā), the pale flower the city treats as its own, aim for mid-April; the blooms last barely a fortnight. Come on a weekday morning and the shoreline paths belong mostly to locals doing tai chi. Come on a spring Saturday afternoon and you will queue for the bridge.

Getting there, and getting it right

Yangzhou has no metro, which surprises people who expect one in a city this size. High-speed trains reach Yangzhou East (扬州东站) in about an hour from Nanjing and roughly two and a half hours from Shanghai, and from the station you take a taxi or ride-hail into the old town, twenty minutes and around 30 yuan. The gardens, Dongguan Street and the tea houses sit close enough to cross on foot; only Slender West Lake wants a short cab ride to link the day together. If you have a spare morning, the China Grand Canal Museum (中国大运河博物馆) at Sanwan (三湾) is free but must be booked a day or two ahead through its WeChat account, and the slots vanish fast on weekends.

The one mistake to avoid is sleeping in. Travellers who treat Yangzhou like a city of sights and save breakfast for last arrive at the tea houses at eleven to find the kitchens already clearing, and they leave never understanding what the fuss was about. Do it the other way. Eat first, walk second, and let the lake be the thing you reach when the light has gone soft.