Hangzhou

John:  I had never heard of Hangzhou until a couple of months ago, and in that I'm probably like most Americans. Which mostly reveals my and our ignorance, because Hangzhou is enormous, with something like seven or eight million people--that is, it is as big as New York. It's an old city, with a long history; it was once the capital of China, and for a while in what Europeans think of as the Middle Ages it may have been the most populous city on earth. Marco Polo visited here, and thought it was the most impressive city he had ever seen.

It's also a city that is beloved by Chinese people, who flock here in droves as tourists: more than 63 million Chinese tourists came to Hangzhou last year. That's three times as many people who visit Venice, for example. The Chinese think of it as a beautiful city, and even have a proverbial expression to the effect of "there's one heaven above, but on earth we have Hangzhou and Suzhou" (the second being another garden city, one tp which Vicki is in fact leading a student trip). That may be an exaggeration, but it's still the case that Hangzhou occupies a pretty big place in the Chinese imagination, so it is well touristed. And we happened to arrive during the annual three-day holiday where people in China are supposed to clean their ancestors' graves. Or, if you no longer live near your ancestors' graves, you can go to Hong Kong Disneyland maybe, or perhaps Hangzhou. The sites were pretty crowded, which was interesting in itself, though it meant that traffic was thick and getting around was sometimes a little tricky.

We came here from Hong Kong in part so as to get off the ship, which was going to be in transit for two days between Hong Kong and Shanghai. We've spent enough time on the ship, and with the long Pacific crossing looming ahead of us, we are eager not to have to be at sea for any longer than is necessary. A lot of people on the voyage went to Beijing, for the obvious reasons.  But that seemed like a long trip to us, and one that Maeve in particular might find to be a challenge.  Hengzhou, though, is conveniently between Hong Kong and Shanghai. And, too it's a place that is off the beaten path for Western tourists, which Beijing is not. Which led to some challenges; not too many people in Hangzhou speak any English at all, and even the staff at the hotel we booked, one that is designed to cater to Western business people who are in Hangzhou on business, had limited English skills. (But of course even their English is way better than our Chinese, which largely consists of saying "Thank you" and "I'm sorry"--that at least covers two of the more important bases of conversation.) 

As I say, Hangzhou has a reputation in China of being a place of great beauty. The urban areas of the city itself are not remarkably beautiful; it does not have a lovely skyline or architecturally interesting public spaces. But it has West Lake, which is quite lovely. It's a large lake in the middle of the city that over the centuries has been tended and manicured; there are gardens, plantings, tea-houses, causeways, bridges--it's all sort of an enormous garden with appealing vistas at every turn.

Aidan at West Lake, Hangzhou. The willows are budding--it's really very pretty

The other attraction in Hengzhou is the Lingyin temple. It's one of the largest and most important Buddhist temples in China, which was established in  326. The buildings themselves--and there are a number of them, one more impressive than the next--are much newer, since the temple has been destroyed and rebuilt something like fifteen times over the centuries, but the place is incredible--amazingly serene, with beautiful carvings and statuary. 

Maybe the most impressive part of the complex is outside, though, in the form of rock carvings into the hillside adjacent to the temple. There are over 300 of them, many of them of different incarnations of the Buddha. Everyone's favorite is surely the laughing Buddha:

The Laughing Buddha--it's an amazing sight, right in the all of the mountain.

The temple complex and the stone carvings were were the trip. We're really glad that we got to see Hangzhou.