Last week we were given a three day weekend, which I used as
opportunity to do my first bit of solo travelling for this, my latest stint in
China. I settled on Hangzhou; a large city of over nine million people and
capital of the Zhejiang Province. The journey itself was relatively
unremarkable; I made my way there in just under two and a half hours using the
bullet train, but hardly saw anything because I had agreed to swap seats with a
local who wanted to sit with her friends which resulted in me no longer having
a window seat. More fool me.
Post-Deng-Xiaoping China is a society that is engaged in a
construction industry boom. Hangzhou city is much like any other Chinese city
in this sense; bust with built up traffic, constantly noisy and with a huge
amount of construction taking place. They are building modern freeways, high
speed rail, sea crossing bridges, a brand new metro system, and modern
electricity grid and energy generating infrastructure, at an almost unhuman
rate.
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| A regular sight in China, fast moving construction. |
Everywhere you go in China there are old buildings being
torn down and new ones being thrown up in a matter of days. Hangzhou was no
exception. Even the hotel I was staying at was under partial construction
during my stay (much to my annoyance – I only discovered this when I was woken
up at 6am to the sound of hammers and drills).Perhaps
this constant noise and the ensuing pollution is what drives locals and visitors
to the peaceful serenity of the Chinese gardens.
Hangzhou is probably most
famous for it’s West Lake and the surrounding temples, pagodas and gardens. West Lake has inspired poets and painters with its natural beauty and
historical relics since the late 5th century AD. It was made a
UNESCO World Heritage Site back in 2011 and was hailed as having been a great
source of inspiration for garden design for centuries, not only throughout the
rest of China, but also to those in Korea and Japan.
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| West Lake - XiHu |
As I spent the larger part of my three days in Hangzhou
within the Westlake gardens I can see why. Typical Chinese gardens are enclosed
by walls and include ponds, rock works, trees and flowers, and an assortment of
halls and pavilions within the garden, connected by winding paths and zigzag
galleries. When moving along these winding paths you can view a succession of artfully
composed scenes, unrolling like a scroll of landscape paintings, no two vistas
ever the same. West Lake did not fail to deliver in the aspect.
A Chinese term for landscape, "shan shui" translates
literally to "mountain” and “water", and while standing at the edge
of West Lake I was able to see an amazing panorama that was filled with both
these aspects. The beauty of this outlook was compounded by visiting at exactly
the right time of year. Spring in China means blooming blossoms, warm sunny
days and clear blue skies (if you are in the right city).
After spending the day weaving in and out of the different
scenes in the gardens, I settled myself onto the bank of the lake to watch the
sunset, I felt somewhat overwhelmed. I was, and still am in awe that I was able
to witness such serene beauty, yet I also felt sad that I did not have anyone
there with me to be able to remember it also. But rather than dwelling on that
sadness, I sought comfort in knowing I could takes endless photographs instead,
and share that beauty with you all anyway.
