The Sixinfang community in Hangzhou hosts centuries-old black-brick structures. A restoration project last year has helped the neighborhood retain its historical and cultural glamor. [Photo by Yang Feiyue/China Daily]

She invites me in and points to a wooden ladder on the right as we pass the kitchen.

"Other households take the ladder to get upstairs," she says.

Her place was right on the ground floor - a long, dim, narrow lane leads to a roughly 20-square-meter room where she now lives with her husband. A fridge, a TV and a few pieces of old-fashioned furniture are crammed into the room.

The old couple enjoys their daily routine. They go to the lake twice a day. It's a five-minute walk away.

"We'll normally get up at 5 in the morning and walk around the lake for two hours," Lou says, smiling.

They'll do it again late in the day.

Sixinfang hosts roughly 220 households, and many residents, like Lou, have lived there for a long time.

The site was a ministry garrison during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), before it was purchased by Chen Xingong, a rich merchant, in the 1920s.

Chen remodeled the place after the fashion of Shanghai's shikumen, the stone-framed gatehouses, which integrated some Western elements.

Chen thus became one of the first realtors in Hangzhou.