Hangzhou's global village offers world of convenience

Ultimately, the village is located at the intersection of ancient tradition and contemporary innovation, in every sense. It takes architectural inspiration from the six-century-old scroll painting, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains, and teems with a fleet of smart buses equipped with augmented reality and piano-playing robots. That's not to mention such small, yet charming, touches as traffic light bulbs shaped like the Games' mascots.

The village also operates in accordance with such green goals as hosting the first carbon-neutral Asiad and making both the Games and the host city "zero waste". To this end, for instance, the village will reduce kitchen waste by a fifth compared with past events of comparable scale.

"All of the village's waste is meticulously sorted. And refrigerated storage units are used for all the discarded perishables from the kitchens," said the village's waste management head, Ruan Jinrong.