This week I’ve been within the metropolis of Hangzhou in China for a workshop. Each morning, I’ve walked the shore of Xihu, or West Lake, the sleek expanse of water lapping the town’s western edge.

Looking throughout the water from the promenade, lined with thick-branched camphor timber, I see layers of forested hills and majestic pagodas rise softly by means of the mist. The human constructions improve the concord of the hills and water. Alongside the promenade, teams of women and men practise tai chi, keeping off the morning chill with puffer jackets and berets. Their actions are sluggish, deliberative, meditative and accompanied by Chinese language classical music that drifts throughout the lake to the cormorants fanning their wings within the weak morning daylight.

Wanting behind me, the concrete and glass tower blocks of the trendy metropolis of Hangzhou stir into wakefulness. Within the twelfth century, this metropolis was Lin’an, possible the most important metropolis on the earth, with 1-2 million inhabitants and a affluent proto-industrial financial system. Marco Polo, that famend customer from the backwaters on the different finish of Eurasia, described it because the ‘Metropolis of Heaven’ and ‘past dispute the best and noblest on the earth’. The afterglow of that splendour will be seen in its historic quarter with low-rise Track Dynasty structure and bustling road markets, its rooftops a sea of curved gray eaves and tiles washing towards the rise of the hills.