Walk and eat — one at a time
Ordered the way you'd actually walk it in one evening — old street first, then the night market, then the local lane.
1
Let's be straight: this is Hangzhou's most famous old street, running from the West Lake shore to the foot of Wushan Hill. The late-Ming and early-Qing timber buildings lining both sides are genuinely beautiful, and after dark it's the most lit-up, buzzing street in the city. It's a joy to walk and great for photos — but the trade is a lot of souvenirs, fans, combs, loose tea, and snacks made for tourists.
What's worth tasting on the main street (pick the stalls with a queue): 葱包桧 cong bao gui — a fried dough stick wrapped in a thin crepe, pressed flat on a griddle and brushed with sweet-savoury and chilli sauce, crisp outside and soft within · 定胜糕 dingsheng cake — a pink steamed glutinous-rice sweet with red-bean filling, shaped like a flower and only lightly sweet, the city's lucky cake · 龙须糖 dragon-beard candy — sugar pulled into a thousand fine threads wrapped around crushed nuts · the historic medicine hall 胡庆余堂 Huqingyu Tang (founded 1874) on this street is also worth a look for the architecture alone.
2
A short stroll from the far end of Hefang Street brings you to Wushan Night Market — running for over 20 years, open every night of the year, roughly 6–11 pm. It's one of the city's oldest and liveliest night markets, with nearly 400 stalls packed shoulder to shoulder selling clothes, accessories and souvenirs, broken up by clusters of food stalls.
What to hunt down: fried stinky tofu (臭豆腐) — pungent from a distance, but crisp outside and soft and juicy within once fried, dipped in sweet chilli sauce · grilled skewers (烧烤) of meat, vegetables and mushrooms · pan-fried buns and little dumplings · fried-dough snacks and roadside sweets · candied hawthorn (糖葫芦) on bright-red skewers.
Here's the card most guidebooks skip. Gaoyin Street runs about 500 metres parallel to Hefang Street — you can cut between the two in a few steps — but the mood is a different world. There are almost no souvenir stalls here, just 30-odd sit-down restaurants, several of them time-honoured city institutions, where Hangzhou families come to eat. It has been a food quarter since the Southern Song dynasty.
The names and dishes to know: 知味观 Zhiwei Guan (founded 1913) — Hangzhou's flagship house, with a ground-floor canteen serving steamed buns, dumplings and cat-ear noodles (猫耳朵), plus a takeaway counter for local cakes and snacks · 王润兴 Wang Runxing — an old Hangzhou home-cooking house doing Dongpo pork and West Lake vinegar fish · order a bowl of 片儿川 pian'er chuan, clear-broth noodles with pickled snow vegetable, pork and bamboo shoots — the city's everyday noodle, and a must.
