ZHEJIANG, one of the smallest provinces but also one of the wealthiest in China, is made up of two quite different areas. The northern part shares its climate, geography, history and the Grand Canal with Jiangsu - the land here is highly cultivated, fertile and netted with waterways, hot in summer but cold in winter. The south, however, mountainous and sparsely populated in the interior, thriving and semi-tropical on the coast, has much more in common with Fujian Province. Even the dialect spoken in the area around Wenzhou has many similarities to Fujianese.

Recent excavations have shown, contrary to expectations, that the Yangzi delta had Neolithic settlements every bit as old as those in the Yellow River valley. At Hemudu on the Shaoxing-Ningbo plain, settled farmers were growing cultivated rice and building solid, precisely structured two-storey houses as long as seven thousand years ago, when rhinoceros and elephant still roamed the land. For millennia thereafter, the region remained prosperous but provincial, politically in the shadow of the more populous Yellow River basin in northern China. The eventual economic shift to the south slowly worked to the region's advantage, however. The Grand Canal was built, and finally, in the twelfth century AD, the imperial court of the Song moved south and set up capital in Hangzhou. For over two centuries, northern Zhejiang enjoyed a spell of unprecedented power, which ended only when the capital moved back to Beijing.

The whole province has an attractive, prosperous air, but most of the tourist destinations are in the north. Hangzhou , the terminus of the Grand Canal, once a great capital and still a centre for silk, tea and paper-making, is one of the greenest, most attractive cities in China, with a famous lake, former resort of emperors. Nearby Shaoxing , a charming small town threaded by canals, offers the chance to tour its beautiful surroundings by boat, while Ningbo , although long superseded by Shanghai as an industrial port, is mainly of interest as a launching pad to the Buddhist island of Putuo Shan , offshore from Ningbo. With more temples than cars, the island is as fresh, green and tranquil as eastern China ever gets. Finally, in the south of the province, the former treaty port and current economic boomtown of Wenzhou , although rather isolated and individual, serves as the gateway to the lush Yandangshan , a nature park filled with waterfalls, pagodas and hiking possibilities.