Giveaways
AFTER SHANGHAI, I headed southwest on the train to Hangzhou, another big city of roughly 11 million inhabitants.
Hangzhou is one of the seven ancient capitals of China, and contains a fabled scenic lake called the Xihu or West Lake, revered by poets for more than a thousand years.
Hangzhou is on the Quiantang River, which has a broad estuary at the mouth, an estuary that narrows very gradually toward the city and thereby concentrates the force of the incoming tide.
By the time the rising tide gets to Hangzhou, it arrives in the form of a tsunami-like wave called a tidal bore. According to an oceanographic website maintained by the University of Liverpool, as of the time of writing,
The Qiantang river at Hangzhou in China has the largest tidal river bore in the world, which can be over 4 m high, 3 km wide, and travelling with a speed in excess of 24 km hr−1 (15 mph). At certain locations, reflected waves can reach 10 m in height, and its roar can be heard over an hour before its arrival.
Visitors sometimes get too close, as in the following video.
In ancient times the tidal bore was thought to be the work of a river dragon, or as we would say in New Zealand, a tāniwha.
In the 900s CE, a tall pagoda called the Liuhe Pagoda was erected on the banks of the Quiantang River, at the location shown by the orange pin in the next map. The pagoda was erected to subdue the tāniwha. An information panel says that “On every floor of the Pagoda there are 174 groups of Song-Dynasty brick sculptures . . . The designs and patterns include lotuses, peonies, incense moulds, swastika, flying gods, gods with bird bodies, lions, fairy deer, children, etc.” More pragmatically, it also served as a lighthouse and a landmark for navigators.
The scheme to subdue the tāniwha does not seem to have worked, but in any case, the pagoda is still there to this day (it is a mediaeval replacement for the original one). The pagoda has eleven levels and you can climb up to the seventh level inside.
There were lots of plaques describing the history of the Liuhe Pagoda, and many colourful legends associated with it.
I also went for a boat cruise on the West Lake, which has many romantically named sites such as ‘Three Pools Mirroring the Moon’ and ‘Islet Submerged in Greenery’ and is a very popular place for newlyweds to visit.
There are many legends associated with West Lake, which was traditionally regarded as the most important place for Chinese travellers to visit at least once in their lifetime. Legend had it that it was created when a dragon and a phoenix living in Heaven created a white jade ball, which could bring life and cause vegetation to sprout in its presence. Unfortunately, the jade ball was dropped, creating West Lake and a sentient peak to watch over it, a nearby peak called Phoenix Mountain.
There is a smaller pagoda at the southern end of the lake, called the Leifeng Pagoda, which is even older than the Liuhe Pagoda in terms of its original foundation, but fell into disrepair and collapsed in 1924, before a new pagoda was built in the year 2000.
The rebuilt Leifeng Pagoda stands next to the ruins of the old one, which collapsed after the destruction of its timber façade by the so-called Japanese pirates who used to menace Hangzhou (pirates from a number of coastal and island regions, not all of them Japanese), and the subsequent theft of its exposed bricks by superstitious local people who believed that the bricks would bring them good luck.
There were debates as to whether the pagoda should be rebuilt, with some modernisers saying that the almost ridiculous story of how it fell, and of how the authorities weren’t able to do anything to stop its fall, was typical of the rotten state the old China had fallen into by the early 1900s, and that its ruins should stand as a warning to the people of the future. Today, the ruins of the old pagoda stand next to the new one and it is possible to explore both.
The best-known legend of the West Lake concerns Leifeng Pagoda. A snake-demon called Lady White Snake transformed herself into a woman and married a man named XuXian.
They lived happily together until one day a monk named Fahai told XuXian that he was married to a demon who planned to devour him. Fahai imprisoned Lady White Snake inside the old Leifeng Pagoda, and it is said that when it fell in 1924, a beautiful woman stepped out.
In most versions of this story Lady White Snake, despite being a demon of sorts, was nonetheless a benevolent figure, a sort of Puff the Magic Dragon misunderstood and unfairly imprisoned for the rest of XuXiang’s life and the centuries beyond by the interfering and dried-up monk.
The tragically romantic aspects of this tale make West Lake a popular site for dating, weddings, and honeymoons, quite apart from all the other attractions the area abounds with, including the Tea Museum of China and the Silk Museum of China
Hangzhou is one of the places where goldfish were supposed to have first been bred from carp; this heritage is honoured by the West Lake Colored Port View Fish Garden, where vast numbers of goldfish can be viewed.
I made a short video of my boat trip around the West Lake:
I was impressed with the more modern parts of the city as well.
I liked the style of this medical centre.
This looks more like a Communist monument of the old school, of which there are many also.
Another place I visited in Hangzhou, to the west of West Lake, was a massive Chan Buddhist temple complex called Lingyin Temple and its associated Fayun Ancient Village and Amanfayun Spa.
Lingyin is located under a mountain called Feilai Feng or Flying Mountain, which is full of limestone grottos containing numerous carvings. Flying Mountain is said to have flown out from India, whence its name.
The monks at Lingyin used to raise monkeys. A famous, comical Chinese tale called Journey to the West, in which a wise monk makes a pilgrimage to India along with the somewhat more dimwitted king of the monkeys and a couple of supernatural beings expelled from Heaven to Earth for various infractions, including a pig-spirit too gluttonous and lustful to retain his angel’s wings, is thought to have been inspired by the monks of Lingyin. In the 1970s a version of Journey to the West was made as a TV series in Japan and screened in a number of other countries, including New Zealand.
Chan Buddhism is the Chinese ancestor of Japanese Zen Buddhism; indeed, Zen is how Chan is pronounced in Japan. Lingyin means ‘Soul’s Retreat’. The complex has five great halls, mostly rebuilt toward the end of the 1800s and in the early 1900s, as well as more recently in the last generation or so.
One of the halls is called the Hall of the Five Hundred Arhats, arhats being enlightened disciples of the Buddha. The exact number is, of course, subject to debate, but the representation of five hundred arhats in statues and paintings is very common in Buddhist circles throughout China, Japan, and Korea, almost as much as the twelve disciples of Jesus in the West.
The temple complex has been restored and rebuilt many times, with significant upgrades in the last decades of the Chinese Empire, which fell in 1911, and again in the last generation or so. The Hall of the 500 Arhats was built in the late 1990s, with the statues of the 500 Arhats cast in bronze sourced from the USA.
To accommodate all the statues and allow people the opportunity to walk between them, the Hall of the 500 Arhats is in the shape of a swastika. That would be inconceivable in the West. But the attitude in the lands of Hinduism and Buddhism is that, as they have long been decorating their temples with this symbol, still locally regarded as a good luck charm, they are not going to stop using it just because it was misappropriated by a bunch of foreigners.
In front of another hall called the Mahavira Hall, also known as the Hall of the Great Sage, where you can see the largest wooden buddha in China (all covered in gold leaf), there stands a ding, or cauldron, which is an ancient Chinese symbol of authority.
The ding usually has three legs and in this case, the three legs symbolise the important Buddhist concept of the Triratna, meaning ‘three jewels’ in Sanskrit, the ancient language of northern India in which many scriptures are written.
The Triratna sounds a lot like the Holy Trinity in Christendom but it is not the same. Instead, it refers to the Buddha, to his teachings (dharma) and to the monasteries or community (sangha). However, it is fair to say that as with the Holy Trinity, all three aspects of the Triratna are also seen as mutually supporting, like the legs of a ding.
Here’s a video I made of my stroll around the temple complex:
Everything around the West Lake is a UNESCO World Heritage site, the West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou. Which reminds me, by the way, that you should never visit a World Heritage Site or anywhere else that is particularly touristy in China at the weekend, as it will be packed. It is much better to visit during the week.
The taxis are quite cheap here, 8 Yuan or 21 Yuan at the most. I took the taxis quite a bit as it was very hot.
There are mountains to the southwest of West Lake and Lingyin Temple, including the Xihu Scenic Interest Area, but I was not able to get to them because of the traffic, being there at the weekend when the place was busy with tourists.
There are lots of walking trails around West Lake and into the mountains nearby, and travellers should explore those as well.
I travelled northward on a fast train to visit a smaller city called Huzhou, which is almost on Lake Tai. Huzhou has a population of about one and a half million in its continuously built-up area and a bit over twice as many when outlying satellite towns that are technically part of Huzhou are included.
Huzhou’s inner city seemed to have a lot of character, with many quaint old areas. It turned out to be my favourite city out of the ones I had explored on this trip, and that was saying something.
And a skyline with old towers still.
The old quarter of Huzhou is very famous, with canals of its own and historic streets such as Yishang (‘Clothes’) Street that date back to the days of what, in Western Europe, would still have been the time of the Roman Empire.
It looks as though the people live above the shops on the ancient shopping streets: a very traditional way of life and a good way of discouraging robbers as well; perhaps the only way that would have worked in ancient times.
I took photos in the morning when the space between the buildings was still almost deserted, and then filmed some video later on after the many street food stores and other shops had opened.
Marco Polo, who spent years in this part of China, might well have wandered these same streets.
Even so, in Huzhou, I realised I was getting a bit off the beaten tourist track. I did not see any other European-type people, and the signs rarely made any concession to English. And yet it is not that far from Shanghai!
Like other Chinese cities I had visited so far, Huzhou seemed to have lots of parks. Apparently, many of these parks were created in the years 1996 to 2007, although others are more ancient. In Huzhou, Feiying Park seemed to be the main one. It, too, had a pagoda and a lake, and many historical artifacts and artworks were added in the 1990s and early 2000s here as well.
The entrepreneur Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, comes from Huzhou. Unusually for the founder of an Internet firm, he was an English teacher, claiming that what he didn’t know about computers was made up for by his gift with communication skills. (Ma was lately forced to create six smaller companies to increase competition, and still runs AliPay.)
Here is a view of the Huzhou riverfront showing the twin towers of Soochow International Plaza (Soochow is an old spelling of the name of the neighbouring city of Suzhou.)
And here is another landmark building in Huzhou, the Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort.
The Sheraton is part of a Lake Tai waterfront district, complete with a locality called “Fisherman’s Wharf.”
I could be wrong, but the building below looks like the sort of fish restaurant you find in such places.
It was in this area, close to Lake Tai, that I got lost on a maze of trails running through the local wetlands, where all the signs were in Chinese. Some bore the version of the hammer and sickle that is associated with the Chinese Communist Party. The nearest I got to an explanation I could read was ‘Taihufengqing Dangjianshifandai’.
My offline map was no help. And what did all the signs in Chinese mean? The ones with what seemed to be lists of rules and telephone numbers to ring? Was it something like, “Sensitive military area, no foreigners allowed?”
Against that theory, there were a few un-military looking people strolling up and down the trails; so maybe it was just a conservation project that happened to be organised by the Chinese equivalent of US Army Corps of Engineers.
In fact, it probably was: for Huzhou is an eco-city that has been becoming much greener in recent years, a project pushed by Xi Jinping himself when he was in charge of the province of Zhejiang, of which Huzhou is a part (and of which the capital is Hangzhou), before he became the President of China.
Historically, Huzhou is famous as a centre for making traditional calligraphic brushes, a surprisingly complex craft which depends, for the very best brushes, on such things as the hair from a rare variety of goat which was nearly exterminated during the 1960s Cultural Revolution, when there was for a time an overzealous campaign against things that were held to be ‘old’. Perhaps that is another reason why so many temples, and things of that nature, have been rebuilt lately.
I saw signs advertising guided tours, both for foreigners and domestic tourism.
It was really good to have a hotel bedroom to myself in Hangzhou. In Huzhou, I stayed at the Greentree Inn, which only cost US $20 a night.
I have no idea what this is, but it looked quite remarkable. A restaurant in the form of a Chinese junk, I suspect. Whether it actually was a junk at one time, like La Dame de Canton in Paris, would be worth finding out.
I thought that these apartments were interesting as well.
Here’s another photo I took, of an amused-looking old lady and her little white dog.
Here is a video I have put together, ‘Impressions of Huzhou’, which includes footage of Yishang Street after the shops are open.
Though Huzhou was my favourite, the Chinese cities I have seen so far on this trip all seem to be really well planned and lovely places to live, with lots of parks and statues.
The next time I am in this region, I would like to visit the Lingering Garden in Suzhou, the biggest city on Lake Tai. It looks as though the Lingering Garden has some of the most spectacular examples of gongshi rocks anywhere: centuries old, once again.
You can do organised tours of these cities, and I would recommend reading up as many guides as possible before touring in case you miss something you might be especially interested in!
As I mentioned earlier, it is now easier to gain visa-free access to China. Getting a visa used to be quite bureaucratic. I heard that China had eased its visitor restrictions to try and boost tourism and thereby counter bad press in the West.
Certainly, English-speakers will find that train ticket machines, information signposts, and other such vital things have labels in English as well as Chinese, and that many train ticket sellers speak English and can give the English-speaking traveller directions on where to transfer, and so on.
China is safe to travel in as opposed to other countries and you can get hotel rooms very cheaply, for US $20 or NZ $30 a night with double beds and air conditioning. Plus, lots of great, cheap food.
Finally, as a coda, I did manage to catch the Shanghai maglev train on the way out of China, heading for Thailand on the next leg of my tour. Here’s a video of my ride on the maglev as it speeds up to 300 km/h.
I say in the video that it is the fastest train in the world. Indeed, the Shanghai airport maglev ran at 501 km/h during testing and used to hit 431 km/h in regular service. However, it is not the fastest train service anymore, because it was derated to 300 km/h in 2021. Many parts of China’s expanding network of high-speed trains with wheels, including the line that runs from Shanghai to Hangzhou, can attain 350 km/h in regular service.
Next stop: Thailand!
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