It's a 10-minute drive from the West Lake to the strikingly modern headquarters of Hangzhou's most famous global company. Alibaba occupies a new cluster of buildings in a campus-style setting with communal gardens and giant screens featuring a traditional Chinese 'cracked ice' design.
It's from here that Jack Ma oversees the operations of one of the world's largest online businesses, which serves more than 65 million members in 240 countries and cities.
The 46-year-old Hangzhou native harnessed the power of the internet to connect Chinese manufacturers of everything, from audio equipment to zippers, to the global marketplace, while reaping huge rewards for himself and his investors.
Subsidiaries include China's biggest online retail website, Taobao, and China Yahoo.
Ma, undoubtedly the most famous businessman from Hangzhou, has come a long way since his teenage days when he used to walk for 40 minutes to the Shangri-La Hotel to look for foreign visitors with whom to speak English.
Ma was neither a good student - he twice failed his university entrance exams - nor did he come from an influential family. His father worked in a photographic shop before becoming head of a dramatic arts association, while his mother was a garment factory worker.
His entrepreneurial instincts really came to the fore during the five years he spent as an English teacher at a local electronics college.