Marco Polo, a son of Venice, felt a strange familiarity when he first arrived in a city in eastern China at the end of the 13th century, full of canals, bridges, gardens, and markets. That place, under the control of the Mongol Empire, was known as Quinsay. The Venetian explorer, years later, during his captivity in Genoa, told his scribe that he had discovered in the East an older sister of his homeland. He described it as "the noblest and most magnificent city in the world." It took several centuries for the first Jesuit missionaries in China, following the clues from the manuscript with Marco Polo's memoirs (Il Milione), to put Quinsay on the map, although by then it had already recovered its original official name, Hangzhou.
The former capital of silk and poetry is now the Chinese cradle of humanoid robots and artificial intelligence. In the land where traders from all over Asia once pilgrimaged, now young engineers obsessed with algorithms and chatbots do so. Hangzhou, a megacity with over 12 million inhabitants, the capital of Zhejiang province, the wealthiest in the country, has become the most ambitious laboratory in China, aspiring to the throne as a technological superpower: it is the national epicenter of startups, an incubator of streamers, and a factory for the most advanced two and four-legged robots on the planet.
The bridges that captivated Marco Polo now connect servers; the imperial gardens are campuses for AI development; the booths where ancient calligraphy scrolls were printed have been replaced by enormous towers where complex code sequences are crafted; many teahouses have been replaced by coworking spaces where discussions about tokens, datasets, GPU clusters are heard on loop...
Local developers boast that, while Silicon Valley emerged from the Californian desert, a land without memory, Hangzhou's technological phenomenon builds its future on the strata of a brilliant civilization. "This is paradise for any ambitious young engineer or programmer. More and more foreigners are coming. Life is very good here, with less pressure than in the country's major tech hub, Shenzhen, and companies offer very high salaries," says Nathan Yu, a twenty-something working at the e-commerce giant Alibaba, founded in Hangzhou in the late 1990s by billionaire Jack Ma.
Alibaba has been the darling of this city for decades until earlier this year when DeepSeek burst onto the scene, the AI startup that rocked global stock markets and caused an earthquake in the tech market. From a skyscraper in the financial district came the R1 reasoning model that the company released as open-source, triggering a wave of panic among major investors who saw China threatening the dominance of American giants, starting with ChatGPT.
"DeepSeek's impact within China was also immense, a national pride for all. Since then, the government has been injecting many more subsidies to create new tech companies and try to replicate that success in various fields," explains Yu.
The AI phenomenon has hit so hard in Hangzhou that local authorities recently announced that, starting this academic year, classes on artificial intelligence would be mandatory in all schools in the city. "The initiative aims to create a talent pool in this field," detailed the education officials.
"During the first two years of primary school, students will become familiar with everyday applications (like DeepSeek at present) and learn the importance of responsible use. In the third and fourth grades, they will create simple projects using AI tools to collect text, images, and audio for their school and daily tasks. In the fifth and sixth grades, they will study basic models and algorithms. In high school, the courses will focus on language model training and interface, leading to a final project where each student develops an AI system."
With AI always at the center stage, Hangzhou is attracting a lot of attention nationally due to the success of the so-called "six little dragons," referring to innovative companies causing a sensation in the tech world. In addition to DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics stands out, the leading developer of humanoid and quadruped robots at the moment. These already patrol the city's avenues with the police and participated in the world's first humanoid half marathon and the first World Humanoid Robot Games, with over 500 "android athletes" competing in 100-meter races with hurdles, long jumps, and various martial arts.
Other robotics companies, such as Yun Shen Chu Technology, BrainCo, and Qunhe Technology, are also making significant advances. And among the "little dragons" group is a video game developer, Game Science, which succeeded worldwide last year with Black Myth: Wukong, generating over a billion dollars in revenue.
The local government, contacted by this newspaper to learn about the city's tech explosion, refers to a statement from state media: "The Hangzhou government has played a crucial role by offering financial incentives, such as tax exemptions for startups and low-interest loans to help tech companies in their research and development phases. For example, it allocates over 15% of the city's tax revenue to tech investments each year, ensuring the availability of resources for innovation."
Tech companies are also not inclined to engage with foreign press. Spokespersons justify the lockdown by stating that they need approval from local authorities to open their doors. A green light that almost never comes, and if it does, months of waiting are required.
A report in TheEconomist pointed out that Hangzhou is currently China's most dynamic local economy, surpassing Shanghai, which traditionally led this ranking. "Hangzhou has reaffirmed its leadership in the AI race, driven by key players like DeepSeek, while leveraging its strengths in advanced manufacturing," wrote the authors, noting that the city has one of the strongest fiscal positions nationally. By 2027, the authorities' plan is for over 80% of its new listed companies to come from the tech sector.
Walking through the city, especially at dusk, it is striking to see the number of young people glued to a mobile phone, a tripod (or selfie stick), and a spotlight everywhere, recording live streams for their networks. Before the AI fever, Hangzhou was known for being the epicenter of the multibillion-dollar e-commerce industry, with entire neighborhoods flooded by over 5,000 companies training streamers selling all kinds of products to an audience of over 600 million people. These individuals work in small cubicles within skyscrapers where they conduct their live broadcasts or seek picturesque outdoor spots.
Among the stone bridges, canals, and skyscrapers, where Marco Polo saw "the noblest city in the world," today stands a metropolis that, without breaking the thread of its history, looks towards a promising present and future dominated by AI.