A good hike is like a good meal, as in that you can still recall most of it, and you’re just grateful you’ve witnessed it. Maling Ancient Road on Tuesday (alone) was like that, and today as well (with Eva).

Shangqing Ancient Road in the Keqiao district of Shaoxing (绍兴柯桥区) is a more widely covered hike around Shanghai, so I imagined it’d be crowded this weekend — but in four hours we only saw three other hikers. We took a 15-kilometer loop, along creeks, a temple, a water reservoir, two steep climbs, garden plots, and several villages in which seniors hang sausages and fish to dry. But the thing I liked the most was to share the empty road with Eva and the little space in between us.