Sat 12th Sept. Tour Day 21: Hangzhou

In the morning, we took the public bus to Hangzhou, about 3½ hours from Shanghai. Hangzhou is one of the top tourist destinations in China, a very beautiful city with many places to visit. Indeed, Marco Polo was supposed to have visited here at the height of its prosperity and described it as "the City of Heaven, the most magnificent in all the world".

Early afternoon, we visited the West Lake, considered one of the scenic wonders of China. Surrounded by gentle green hills, the lake's willow-shaded causeways and cover of lotus blossoms had been the inspiration for artists through the ages. Beautiful it may be, but while we were there, it was pretty smoggy and apparently, this was as clear as it got during the season. Taking a boat out onto the lake was supposed to be highly recommended but if you did that today, you’d be in danger of getting lost! We had a walk along part of the lake, it was so big that it would have probably taken more than a whole day to walk around all of it.

The rest of the day was free so I decided with some of the others to visit the Feilai Feng (The Peak that Flew Here) Scenic Area. The mountain was given its name by a monk who thought it was a spitting image of one in India and it had flown here to Hangzhou. The area contained hundreds of beautiful, intricate Buddhist figures carved into the rocks and in grottoes, many dating from the 10th century. There were steps and paths carved into the rock faces for a closer inspection or you could just walk along the pathway to view them from afar. The workmanship of some of the carvings was amazing.

The Area also contained the Lingyin Si Temple. This started out as just another series of temples with giant Buddhist sculptures in the halls but further into it, there were some seriously impressive sights here – the 66ft Buddha carved from wood, the back wall covered entirely with Buddhist carvings / sculptures (not sure how it was done, just one carving or lots of statues stuck on), intricately carved stone inset panels on the walls, a beautiful large frieze carved from stone with superbly detailed workmanship, the Hall of 500 Arhats, with 500 sculptures of Buddha disciples (Arhats). All in all, this was an amazing place and it was lucky I chose it for a visit!

We'd be off to the Yellow Mountain the next day for some serious climbing so no late night drinking tonight!