When most people travel to eastern China, they make Shanghai their base. This makes sense, as it’s the biggest and most famous city with a huge airport. From Shanghai, many visitors simply visit Hangzhou as a day trip and return in the evening. This is a shame, as there’s so much to see and do in Hangzhou that even a week isn’t enough to see it all. While I like Shanghai, I’d highly recommend choosing Hangzhou as your base instead.
The two cities are close enough (about an hour apart by bullet train) that they share many of the same day trips in common. For example, you can get to many of the region’s water towns or visit the gardens of Suzhou just as easily from Hangzhou as you can from Shanghai. Hangzhou is also closer to the stunning mountains of Huangshan.
Hangzhou has no shortage of places to see, yet is not nearly as exhausting or difficult to get around compared to Shanghai. It has all the basic amenities you’d expect from a big city, but without Shanghai’s insane crowds. If you’re going to be staying in East China for awhile, Hangzhou is much less stressful, nearly as convenient and contains more cultural sites than Shanghai does.
Compared to Shanghai, you might have a harder time finding direct international flights in and out of Hangzhou, but the airport does have direct flights to places like LA, San Francisco, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Chiang Mai. And with two bullet train stations, it’s also incredibly easy to travel to and from Hangzhou by train from pretty much anywhere else in China.