Why West Lake is the heart of Hangzhou
Picture this: you are standing at the lakeshore at six in the morning. A thin mist hangs over the still water, the willows along the Bai Causeway trail their branches into the lake, a single wooden boat is being rowed slowly across, and far off rises the silhouette of Leifeng Pagoda on its hill. The scene has barely changed from the one Song-dynasty poets described a thousand years ago. This is exactly why the Chinese call Hangzhou "paradise on earth."
West Lake — Xi Hu (西湖), literally "the Western Lake" — covers about 6.4 square kilometres in the centre of Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site in 2011 as a landscape that has shaped Chinese aesthetics for centuries, in painting, poetry and garden design alike. Two causeways cut across the water, islands sit at its centre, pagodas stand on opposite shores, and temples and classical gardens line the banks in an almost unbroken sequence.
What sets West Lake apart from an ordinary lake is simple: it is free, 24 hours a day, with no fence and no ticket gate. Hangzhou residents walk, jog and row here every day as if it were their back garden. We will tell you what is worth seeing, which stretch to walk and how to avoid the crowds.
