Paradise On Earth?

Several ancient Chinese texts refer to Hangzhou as ‘Paradise on Earth’.

West Lake – the original of several namesakes around China and beyond – is the soul of Hangzhou and it is quickly apparent why so many poets and artists have drawn inspiration from it for centuries.

But the city felt a bit contrived, and the hordes of tourists everywhere detracted from the ambience somewhat. To add to our disappointment, tickets to the Impressions West Lake show, that we had set our hearts on watching that evening, were block sold to some company with none reserved for the public. I was gutted because we had come to Hangzhou especially to watch that show featuring skilled dancers performing directly on the lake.

I actually contemplated accepting the offer of black market seats by a tout outside the gate, but R managed to dissuade me with graphic descriptions of the two of us languishing in a Chinese Jail. It took a while to shake off my acute disappointment and get down to enjoying the rest of our day.

We took a leisurely stroll to Gushan Dao (Solitary Island) and the Seal Engravers Society housed in a beautiful building  with perfectly landscaped grounds. The display of ancient seals was most interesting even with the captions being all in Chinese.

Next, we took a ferry across to the even more crowded “Three Pools Mirroring The Moon” island, and then yet another ferry to the Huagang Gong garden from where we walked to the Lei Feng Pagoda.

The original Pagoda collapsed completely in 1924 and has since been renovated – rather over zealously – with escalators up to the main entrance and elevators to the top! A hidden underground palace was discovered beneath the foundation during restoration. Several relics found there, including a gold covered hair of the Buddha, are currently displayed in a basement museum. 

The elevators were closed that evening. Too tired to walk up to the top and back, we hopped on to one of the electric sightseeing carts near the gate which did a full circuit of the lake and dropped us off near the old town with directions to Zhi Wei Guan restaurant for dinner. Their famed ‘shrimp with Longjing tea’ turned out to be bland and tasteless (another huge disappointment). I found myself wishing we were back in Chongqing gorging on some fiery Dan Dan Noodles and Hotpot instead.

Day two turned out to be way more enjoyable. We requested our concierge to write down everything on our list in Chinese and also got him to recommend a tea house.

Our first stop was Ling Yin Temple or the “Temple of the Souls Retreat”, originally built by a Buddhist monk from India called Hui Li. It was crowded and a bit underwhelming after the other wonderful temples we had visited in China so far. The rock carvings and grottoes of Feilai Feng in front of the temple, however, were pretty impressive even though they aren’t on the same scale as those in Dazu. The name Feilai Feng, incidentally, refers to the legend about a peak that magically flew all the way here from India when Hui Li expressed nostalgia for his home town!

We popped into the National Tea Museum on our way back and my (ex) tea-planter husband found it particularly absorbing. Displays included antique tea processing machinery, unique tea pots and a mind-boggling variety of teas. I had never seen tea leaves pressed into so many different shapes before.

The Hu Qingyu Tang Museum of Chinese medicine, hidden behind an unprepossessing sign (in Chinese…our concierge’s notes came in so handy) back in the old town, was equally interesting. This is a gem of a museum spread across several rooms of a lovely Qing dynasty building with a dispensing pharmacy up front.

It is apparently one of two important traditional medicine centres in China. For some – exhaustive – info on TCM check out these posts by a blogger friend – Shards of China.

Lunch, that sunny afternoon, in a very authentic tea house tucked behind a modern shopfront (I cannot recall the name unfortunately) was the highlight of our time in Hangzhou.

The place was full of locals – no other tourists but us – playing cards and generally chilling out. It had the feel of a social club and not even one of the waiters knew a word of English!

A traditional tea house in this region varies from a typical restaurant in the way you place your order. Where a restaurant has a menu for food, here the focus is on tea. Ordering a pot of tea, ranging from about ten to a few hundred Yuan (our two pots of tea cost 30 yuan), lets you partake of an all-you-can-eat’ buffet that is constantly replenished! We still haven’t figured out the economics of this system, but the buffet was an extensive spread of lip-smacking treats from soft shell crabs to shrimp, pork, and every kind of Chinese delicacy you could think of. A fantastic ‘local’ experience, not to be missed.

The rest of the old town was the sanitised spectacle that is typical of any major tourist destination in China. After a point, the fake “old towns” and the luxury boutiques arrayed around a pedestrian ‘square’ become a drag. You’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.

Is Hangzhou worth a visit? It certainly is! The lake is beautiful enough, the tea houses atmospheric and a couple of days here could be a relaxing break from an otherwise hectic China schedule.

But paradise, it is not.