Xiaohe Straight Street History Protect Block

About this audio guide

This guide to Xiaohe Straight Street in Hangzhou starts with a puzzle: the lane looks nine hundred years old, from the Southern Song dynasty when canal barges stacked rice and salt on this bank, yet much of what holds it together dates from after 2007. It follows how the city, facing a rotted and abandoned block by the 1980s, chose to rebuild from the inside out rather than demolish, saving carved wooden pillars and lattice windows while replacing the structure behind them with concrete, plumbing and wiring. Along the way it stops at the old Fang Zengchang soy sauce yard, whose brewing vats once perfumed the whole lane before falling silent for decades.