Eastern China — a modern mix of cellphones, cobblers, farmers and fishing people. Phillip Game soaks up the atmosphere of culture which may have taken on a few trendy aspects, but still retains its distinctly Middle Kingdom feel..

E astern China has drawn foreigners since the days of Marco Polo, but always on its own terms. Forget those folksy little homestays with banana pancakes and all your favourite tapes. Hotels here seem imposing — at first sight. Meals are good — but uncompromisingly Chinese. Rice porridge anyone?

Downtown Hangzhou throbs with neon-lit energy: Novotel, Jeans West, KFC. Traffic cops direct streams of sleek sedan cars on the waterfront boulevard. Smart couples stroll past brightly-lit shop windows, ears glued to their mobiles.

It might be skin-deep, as our hotel’s split personality suggests. Gleaming marble, polished brass and plate glass up front quickly give way to the dark stains, gloom and institutional bedding of any old-fashioned State guesthouse.

By 6:30am all of Hangzhou is already cycling, strolling or stretching in slow motion as a rosy sun burns the haze off the lake. Buzzing little red taxis whisk us down broad avenues to the bus terminal, weaving and dodging through swarming cyclists and lumbering trolley buses. The electronic arrivals and departures board is impressive, a wall of intricate characters forming and re-forming. Take a deep breath ... smile, point. Yes, which bus terminal? There are three. No, not this one.

Into another taxi — they are metered and the drivers seem honest. Another crowded waiting room, numbered windows, impenetrable signs. Brisk ladies with signal flags and shrill whistles direct the reversing drivers. Here are touches which colour the whole journey. Our party is ushered into a private room to await departure time in privileged comfort.

The city’s outskirts form a repetitive sprawl of garishly-tiled shophouses with windows tinted metallic blue, spreading like fungi across the emerald rice paddies, shops and games downstairs, apartments upstairs. Alternative (or incomplete) concrete form-work fleshed out with erratic or breeze-block courses.

In eight hours we drive 280km west along the so-called Golden Line to reach Huangshan, the Yellow Mountains of eastern China. Toll gates and checkpoints interrupt our progress, ceremonial arches, emblazoned with golden characters. Leaf-green hillsides are covered in bamboo and cypress groves. A pervasive, dusty haze is exacerbated by heaps of crumbling rubble.

At last the road squeezes into a valley and now the villages retain a timeless charm, abstracts of dark curving tiles and creamy chalk cuboids. Solid doorjams wear auspicious characters pasted on paper diamonds and, sometimes, black ink drawings above the lintels. Pudding basin haircuts and plain blouses defy the seductions of the city, even if the village satellite dish is reaching out to the world.

Domestic tourists have flocked to Huangshan for 12 centuries. Regimented parties set out into the dripping forests. As the mists lift, momentarily, you see the tiers of stone stairs below, crowded with hundreds of tiny figures, picking their way towards peaks like Bright Top, Purple Cloud or Heavenly Capital. Cableways work over-time. China’s middle classes have come out to play, mobile phones tucked into purses and pockets.

By following a ‘road less travelled’ back toward the coast, embarking on a crossing of Qiandaohu, Lake of a Thousand Islands, we may yet cross paths with farmers and fishing people not yet too familiar with telephones of any sort or other trappings of modern day life.

The route weaves off through hills knitted with tea bushes, snaking through dusty hamlets where the soft sounds of a summer morning are disturbed by the clatter of an agricultural engine or by voices raised at a market stall. Near bustling Tunxi we pass two ancient, once-grand pagodas, several stories of crumbling brick sprouting weeds and bushes.

From the bustling market square of Shendu, down a lane and a flight of wide stairs lies a pattern of sampans and ferries nosing into the shore. Impounded by a dam built on the upper Xin’an River in 1959, this vast body of water was, according to some, created by dislocating (and dispossessing) as many as 300,000 people, echoing the controversy surrounding the Three Gorges Project on the Yangtze.

Piglets squirm inside cane baskets. Fresh-made dumplings stand in rows, ready to be steamed. Peaches, pears and nashi, green apples and fresh lychee tempt us, as do the dripping wedges of watermelon, weighed out carefully in a steel dish before grimy bank notes can change hands.

Up the gangplank and on to the 11 o'clock ferry, heading east. We find ourselves the only upper-deck passengers, gasping at the companionways to catch the passing breeze.

For the first couple of hours we chug down a narrow waterway, the ferry zigzagging and nosing into villages which tumble down dry stone embankments. People hurry down to the waterline to board or to unbundle their goods. Heavy wooden chests or even huge bundles are loaded with great physical effort by both sexes.

Mid afternoon the lake has widened, the villages are left behind, only the rocky islands keep company as we steam eastwards. If Qiandaohu Town seems at first sight unappealing, it is thanks to the wedding cake architecture dominating the foreshore. Ostentatious hotels perch on rocky headlands, flags flapping in the soft breeze.

The warm hazy light washing over tacky buildings, craggy capes and tenacious pines momentarily recalls those old Soviet-bloc propaganda photos of workers’ paradises on the Black Sea.

Fortunately, the fresh light of morning reveals a less affected town going about its business. Travellers squirm on bench seats in the departures hall of the ferry terminal, whilst tricycle hauliers glide slowly down the lakefront boulevard, laden with crates of beer. Under a canvas awning a woman in orange cooks up tantalising pancakes piled high with stir-fried vegetables and noodles. Watermelons again stand like polished green boulders waiting to be carved up into dripping wedges.

A cobbler hammers, taps and stitches in his corner of a laneway. A toy van or nearby has created an eye-catching array of bright acrylic colours. Two green-shirted Public Security Bureau men stand in the middle of an intersection, questioning an errant motorcyclist who seems unafraid to give as good as he gets.