Three days in Hangzhou: the lake every Chinese poet got to first
Two nights by the water: the southeast shore and a pagoda at sunset, the temple and tea hills to the west, and a causeway walk before the train back.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Hangzhou
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
West Lake has been the subject of Chinese poetry for a thousand years, which means two things. It is genuinely beautiful, and every willow on it has already been written about by somebody better than you.
It also means the lake is managed as a work of art rather than a park. The causeways were built by poets who happened to be governors, the islands were made from dredged silt, and the whole thing is arranged in views that have names and a correct season for looking at them.
Hangzhou is under an hour from Shanghai by high speed train, which tempts people into doing it in a day. Two nights turns it into a different trip: you get the lake at dawn, the temple before the coaches, and an evening when the day visitors have gone home.
Highlights
- The southeast shore at sunset, with the pagoda lit up above the water and the whole city out walking
- Lingyin Temple at opening, before the incense smoke thickens and the tour flags come out
- The Feilaifeng carvings, hundreds of Buddhist figures cut into a limestone cliff over four hundred years
- Longjing tea drunk on the hill where it is picked, which ruins the supermarket version permanently
- Walking the Su Causeway early, when it belongs to people running and doing tai chi under the peach trees
Where to stay
Hangzhou, two nights
Stay on the east or south shore, between Hubin and Nanshan Road. That is the walkable side, with the metro underneath, restaurants behind and the lake across the road.
The north shore along Beishan Road is quieter and prettier and further from a station. The area around Hangzhou East railway station is convenient and has nothing to recommend it otherwise.
Day by day
Day 1 in Hangzhou
The lake, and the pagoda that fell down
Arrive, drop the bags and walk to the water. The east shore is the busy one and the right one to start on, because it gives you the whole lake at once with the hills behind it.
Then go south along Nanshan Road, where two of the oldest things in Hangzhou sit within a few hundred metres of each other: a temple from 954 and a pagoda that has fallen down twice.
The pagoda is the sunset spot and everybody knows it, so go up before the light turns rather than after.
- 15:00
West Lake
NatureA little over six square kilometres of water ringed by hills, causeways and temples, and on the world heritage list as a designed landscape rather than a natural one. Start on the east shore, walk south, and ignore the checklist of ten named views.
- 17:30
Jingci Temple
ReligiousA Buddhist temple founded in 954 on the lower slope of Nanping Hill, with a ten tonne bell that is rung a hundred and eight times at Chinese New Year and more modestly at dusk every evening. Quieter than the big temple to the west, and free of coaches.
- 19:00
Leifeng Pagoda
OtherFirst built in 977, collapsed in 1924 and rebuilt in 2002 around its own ruins, which are displayed under glass in the basement. Lifts and escalators take you up. Go an hour before sunset for the view down the lake, and look back at it from the shore afterwards when it lights up.
With more time: Impression West Lake, a Zhang Yimou production performed on the water after dark, runs twice a night in season and is best seen from a cheap seat rather than an expensive one.
Day 2 in Hangzhou
A temple, a cliff full of Buddhas, and the tea hills
West of the lake the ground rises into wooded hills, and everything worth a full day in Hangzhou is up there. Go early: Lingyin is the busiest temple in the province and the difference between half past seven and ten o'clock is enormous.
The cliff opposite the temple entrance is the part people skip and should not. Three hundred and some figures are carved into the limestone, spread across an outcrop and up into caves, and the oldest of them are a thousand years old.
The afternoon goes uphill into the tea. The terraces around Longjing village start about two kilometres past the temple, and walking between them is the best hour of the day.
- 08:00
Lingyin Temple
ReligiousOne of the oldest and largest Buddhist monasteries in southeast China, working, and packed by mid morning. A separate ticket covers the temple beyond the scenic area gate. There is a chairlift up the hill behind it, though the steps are easy.
- 11:00
Feilaifeng Grottoes
HistoricA limestone outcrop opposite the temple, carved with hundreds of Buddhist figures between the tenth and fourteenth centuries and riddled with caves you can walk through. The same ticket as the temple grounds covers it, so do not walk past.
- 14:00
China Tea Museum
CultureA free museum set among working tea terraces, covering how Longjing is grown, fired and graded, with a tasting room. The point is as much the walk to it through the plantations as the exhibits.
With more time: The lanes above the tea museum are full of farmhouse restaurants serving shrimp fried with Longjing leaves, which sounds like a gimmick and is a genuine local dish.
Day 3 in Hangzhou
A causeway at dawn, then the celadon
The causeway named after the poet Su Dongpo runs nearly three kilometres north to south across the lake, planted with willows and peach trees, and it dates from 1189. At seven in the morning it belongs to runners and old men with cassette players.
Do it on foot rather than by bike, since the bridges are the point and there are six of them. It comes out near Solitary Hill at the north end.
The provincial museum is on that hill and takes an hour, which is exactly the amount of time you have before a train. Hangzhou East is twenty minutes away on the metro.
- 07:00
Spring Dawn at Su Causeway
VisitThe older of the two causeways, built in 1189 from silt dredged out of the lake and crossed by six arched bridges. Walk it north to south or the other way, early, before the tour groups arrive from Shanghai.
- 09:30
Zhejiang Provincial Museum
CultureThe provincial collection, on Solitary Hill at the lake's north edge, and worth an hour for the celadon alone: pale green Song dynasty porcelain made an hour's drive from here and copied everywhere since.
With more time: The Bai Causeway runs from the same hill back to the east shore in ten minutes, so you can leave the lake by walking across it rather than round it.
Before you go
Getting there and around
High speed trains run from Shanghai Hongqiao to Hangzhou East every few minutes and take about fifty minutes. From Hangzhou East the metro reaches the lake in twenty.
Around the lake, walk or hire a bike. The full circuit is about fifteen kilometres, which is a long day on foot and a pleasant two hours on wheels. Public bikes are unlocked through Alipay.
Buses 7 and Y2 run from the lake out to Lingyin and the tea hills. A taxi does the same trip for a few pounds and saves half an hour.
When to come
Late March to May is peach and cherry blossom season and the best time to be here. October is the other good window, when the osmanthus flowers and the whole city smells of it.
Summer is hot and very humid, and the lake gets crowded to the point of shuffling. Winter is cold and grey, though snow on the Broken Bridge is one of the named views for a reason.
The first week of October is the single worst time. Domestic tourism fills the causeways and the temple queues run into hours.
Tea
Longjing, or dragon well, is a flat pan-fired green tea grown on the hills west of the lake, and Hangzhou is where the good grades stay. The pre-Qingming picking in late March is the expensive one.
Buying it in the villages means dealing with hard sell and inflated prices. The tea museum and the state shops are duller and honest, and a hundred grams of decent Longjing is not expensive.
Every teahouse around the lake serves it in a glass rather than a pot, leaves loose in the bottom, topped up with water that has been let off the boil.
Hangzhou is not a city of monuments. Almost nothing here is very old, because almost everything has burned down or fallen over at least once and been rebuilt by people who thought the view mattered more than the masonry.
That is the argument the lake makes. A thousand years of governors, poets and monks kept editing the same stretch of water until it looked the way they wanted, and then everybody agreed to keep it that way.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Hangzhou worth more than a day trip from Shanghai?
- Yes. A day trip gives you the middle of the day at the busiest sights and nothing else. Two nights gives you the lake at dawn and at dusk, which is when it is worth seeing, and a full day for the temple and the tea hills that a day trip cannot fit at all.
- Hangzhou or Suzhou?
- Suzhou for gardens and canals, Hangzhou for landscape. Suzhou is the more concentrated sightseeing and Hangzhou is the better place to spend a day doing very little. Both are under an hour from Shanghai, and a week takes in both easily.
- How do I get around the lake?
- Walking covers the east and south shores comfortably. For the full circuit, hire a public bicycle through Alipay or take one of the electric shuttle buggies that run the lakeside road. Tourist boats cross to the islands from several points and take about half an hour.
- When is the best time to visit?
- Late March to May, or October. Spring brings peach blossom and the first tea picking, October brings osmanthus and clear air. Avoid July and August for the humidity, and avoid the first week of October entirely.
- Can I change this plan?
- Yes. Copy it into the planner and stretch it to three nights if you want a boat to the islands, or swap the last morning for the museums on the north shore.