Yangzhou in one slow day: morning tea, a canal towpath, evening bathhouse

Yangzhou (扬州, Yángzhōu) sits an hour north of Nanjing, on the seam where the Grand Canal meets the Yangtze, and it keeps a saying about how a day there should be spent. Follow the saying and the route builds itself — tea at the start, walking through the middle, hot water at the end. Almost none of it is more than five kilometres from the rest.

Morning, when the skin wraps water

The teahouses open early and thin out by ten. At Fuchun (富春, Fùchūn), down a lane off Dechengqiao in the old town, the courtyard fills before eight and the order barely changes: a pot of the house blend, green leaf cut with jasmine and oolong, and a steamer of sanding bao (三丁包, sāndīng bāo) — buns diced with chicken, pork and bamboo shoot. The room is the point more than the dumpling: lids clattering, a long-spouted kettle moving between tables, regulars reading yesterday's paper without hurry.

早上皮包水，晚上水包皮 — in the morning the skin wraps water; in the evening the water wraps the skin.

Midday, a garden made of bamboo

Ge Garden (个园, Gè Yuán) takes its name from the character 个, three strokes shaped like a bamboo leaf, and the salt merchant who built it planted the courtyards accordingly. Four rockeries stand for four seasons — pale stone for spring shoots, grey lake rock for summer, yellow stone for autumn, white quartz banked against a north wall for winter. Half an hour walks it; an hour sits in it. Dongguan Street outside is loud and snack-heavy, so cut through it and take the side lanes, where laundry still crosses the alley overhead.

Afternoon, along the old canal

Dongguan Gudu (东关古渡, Dōngguān Gǔdù) is the old ferry landing, a broad flight of steps down to the water where the street ends. Turn south and walk the towpath: this is a working canal, and barges pass low and loaded with sand and coal, riding close enough to the waterline that laundry hangs off the wheelhouse. The walk is flat, shaded in patches, and quiet in a way the old street is not.

扬州的一天，从一壶早茶开始，在一池热水里结束。

Evening, when the water wraps the skin

Yangzhou's old trade is the sanbadao (三把刀, sān bǎ dāo), the three knives — the cook's cleaver, the barber's razor, and the pedicure blade of xiujiao (修脚, xiūjiǎo). The bathhouse is where the last two still work: men's and women's sides separate, a desk where you pay by the hour, a hot pool, and a bench where someone trims calluses with a blade the width of a fingernail. Come out at dusk with your legs undone, and the walk back through the lanes is the last part of the itinerary.