Xitang after the cameras left: the water town Mission: Impossible borrowed

Before the day-trippers arrive, the covered corridor along Xitang's (西塘, Xītáng) west bank belongs to the people who live behind it: a woman rinsing rice at the water steps, a man setting out folding stools, the first pot of wine ladled from an earthen jar. The tiles overhead are the same shape a Hollywood crew climbed onto in 2005, when this canal town in northern Zhejiang stood in for a nameless old China in the third Mission: Impossible film. Twenty years on the town is still here, still wet, still frying stinky tofu three doors from where the cameras once stood.

The corridor that did the running

Xitang's signature is not a temple or a single bridge but a roof. The 烟雨长廊 (yānyǔ chángláng, the misty-rain corridor) is a continuous covered walkway running for more than a kilometre along the Xitang River, built so that shopfronts and their customers stay dry through Jiangnan's long grey drizzle. That roof is why the film crew came. The water-town chase was cut so fast that no single frame is identifiable, which was the point — the lanes off the corridor and the stone banks were shot here, then intercut with a studio set built in Shanghai.

Stand under the corridor near 送子来凤桥 (Sòngzǐ Láifèng Qiáo, the bridge where the phoenix brings a son), a low double-arched Ming stone bridge, and the trick reveals itself: the sightline down the covered walk, red lanterns receding to a point, reads as anywhere and nowhere at once. Xitang counts nine small rivers converging inside the old quarter and more than a hundred lanes feeding them, so the geometry never repeats. Come at 07:00, before the first tour flag goes up, and you get the corridor almost to yourself; by 10:30 you are shuffling behind a group from Shanghai.

西塘的看点不在某座桥，而在那条下雨天也淋不到的烟雨长廊。

The alley the wide shots never show

Off the water runs 石皮弄 (Shípí Lòng, stone-skin alley), squeezed between two branches of the old Wang (王) family compound. It is about 68 metres long and narrows to under a metre at the shoulders, floored with a couple of hundred thin flagstones laid over a covered drainage channel — tap one with your heel and you hear the water move beneath. Two people cannot pass without one turning sideways. No camera crane fits down it, which is exactly why the film left it out and why it is worth walking. Look up and the sky is a bright seam between two black-tiled eaves.

The lanes around it are still lived in rather than staged. Laundry hangs on bamboo poles over the canal, someone's caged bird sings above a noodle counter, and the shrine on 西园 (Xīyuán, the west garden) side keeps its incense going for residents, not ticket-holders. This is the ground-level Xitang: not a set that empties at night but a working town the scenery happens to sit inside.

Eating between the wine jars

Xitang is a place you graze rather than sit down to. The town's loudest smell comes from 管老太臭豆腐 (Guǎn lǎotài chòudòufu), the stinky-tofu stall that started here and now has copies down the corridor; a paper tray of the black, deep-fried squares with chilli and cumin runs about 10–15 yuan. For something to carry, buy 芡实糕 (qiànshígāo, gordon-euryale cake), sold warm and sliced from a steamer in soft pale bricks — a boxed portion is around 15–20 yuan, and the honest shops let you taste before you commit. Look also for 荷叶粉蒸肉 (héyè fěnzhēngròu), pork rolled in rice flour and steamed inside a lotus leaf until it smells green.

The jars stacked outside half the shops hold 黄酒 (huángjiǔ, yellow rice wine); this corner of Zhejiang around 嘉善 (Jiāshàn) has brewed it for centuries, and a small warmed cup is a few yuan. Drink it slow — it is gentler than báijiǔ but it does not stay gentle. A bowl of 馄饨 (húntún, wonton) from a canal-side counter, five yuan or so, is the local breakfast and the best cure for having drunk the wine too fast.

When the town turns on its lights

The reason to stay past the last high-speed train back to Shanghai is the hour after the groups leave. Around dusk the red lanterns strung under the corridor come on and double themselves in the black water, the tofu stalls quieten, and the town stops performing. A hand-rowed boat, 手摇船 (shǒuyáochuán), will take you along the canals for roughly 100–150 yuan for the boat, not per head — negotiate before you step down onto the wet stone. Book a room in one of the 客栈 (kèzhàn, canal-side guesthouses) inside the old quarter; a simple double runs from around 200 yuan on a weeknight and far more on a summer Saturday. Waking inside the walls, you get the corridor at dawn twice: once yours, once the town's.

Getting there, and the one mistake to avoid

From 上海虹桥 (Shànghǎi Hóngqiáo) station, high-speed trains reach 嘉善南 (Jiāshàn Nán) in about 25 minutes for roughly 25 yuan; from there it is 10 kilometres to Xitang by the K215 bus or a taxi of around 30 yuan. The older 嘉善 (Jiāshàn) station sits nearer the town-bound buses if the timings work out. Entry to the scenic area is a day pass of about 95 yuan that also covers a handful of indoor halls and gardens; the gates loosen in the evening, which is one more argument for arriving late. The mistake nearly every visitor makes is treating Xitang as a Shanghai day trip and leaving at five: you see the crowds and the souvenir stalls and none of the water town the film actually borrowed. Come in the afternoon, stay the night, and let the place empty out around you.