Hangzhou has traded silk since the Song court moved here in 1138, and it still does — by the metre on Xinhua Road, by the bolt at Sijiqing. Between wholesale halls, canal-side craft studios and the Longjing tea villages, three days barely covers it.
Asia's largest garment wholesale hub: nine multi-storey halls off Qiutao Road with some 20,000 stalls, trading from 05:00 to around 15:00. Sellers expect volume orders, but single pieces go for RMB 30-150 if you buy without fuss.
Four floors on Zhonghe Road South selling songbird cages, penjing bonsai, jade beads, walnut worry-stones and clay tea pets. Floor three hides the seal-carvers, who cut a name chop into soapstone while you wait. Open 09:00-17:30.
Housed in a converted Qing granary on the Grand Canal at 336 Xiaohe Road, with free entry. The top floor is a working studio floor where masters of paper-cutting, oil-paper umbrellas and Xiaoshan lace sell straight off the bench.
Qing warehouse lanes facing Gongchen Bridge, holding the fan, umbrella and scissors museums — each with a shop attached. Independent studios along the towpath sell hand-thrown celadon and indigo-dyed cotton until about 21:00.
Roughly 800 metres of independent womenswear between Fengqi Road and Tiyuchang Road, a design incubator for local labels since the 1990s. Many shops cut their own samples in upstairs workrooms and price them at RMB 200-600.
The eight-building department store complex on Wulin Square, open 10:00-22:00. International luxury fills floors one to three, while floor five stocks Chinese labels including Exception de Mixmind and Jiangnan Buyi. Tax-refund desk on B1.
A 1950s state chemical-fibre mill on Hangfu Road converted into studios in 2002, making it Hangzhou's first creative park. Ceramics, leather and screen-print workshops open on weekdays; several sell seconds and run half-day making classes.
Four linked blocks wrapping the lakeside end of Yan'an Road, open until 22:00. Block D holds the concept stores and a large stationery-and-bookshop basement; the rooftop terraces on B and C look straight across the water.
A tea hamlet in a valley 8km west of the lake where farmhouses sell their own Xihu Longjing straight from the roasting wok. Pre-Qingming first flush is expensive; the later grades cost a fraction and taste remarkably close.
A covered market running 600 metres along Xinhua Road with around 600 stalls, trading since 1987. Scarves, quilt covers and raw mulberry silk sold by the metre; tailors at the north end will make a qipao in about 48 hours.
A 400-metre canal street of two-storey Qing shopfronts north of Gongchen Bridge, restored in 2007 and still lived in. Wooden-door studios sell bamboo steamers, hand-bound notebooks and Hangzhou blue-printed cotton cloth.
Several hundred stalls set up from 17:00 and run until about 23:00, covering silk fans, socks, phone cases, luggage and cheap jade. It is Hangzhou's oldest night market and the least polished shopping in the city.