The Paradise On Earth – HangZhou and SuZhou

After having an immaculate night out in Shanghai city centre, we went straight to our 2nd destination of the tour on Day 2, another important city of south east China, HangZhou. ‘Wow! It was such a rush tour!’ Yes. It was unfortunately. We expected that since it was a full packed vacation package covering 5 cities in 8 days. ‘Was it the end of Shanghai city tour?’ No. We will spend another day in Shanghai on our last part of the tour before leaving China. 🙂

Where is HangZhou then? HangZhou is the capital of ZheJiang province located at 180Km southwest of Shanghai. It took us 2 and a half hours to reach there. She is an another fascinating travel destination of China where it sites one of the most beautiful lake in China called Xi Hu, or West Lake. In ancient China since thousand years ago, SuZhou and Hangzhou has always be nominated as 2 paradise cities for human being. ‘Shang you tian tang, xia you Su Hang’ which means while paradise is our dream home afterlife, SuZhou and HangZhou is people dream home while alive.

Though it is only 180km apart, HangZhou is a totally different city from Shanghai, in terms of people, buildings and envirenment. While Shanghai is a metropolitan city full of skyscrapers, people and cars, HangZhou is a serene city full of trees, water and poets, but people and cars. While Shanghai people could be described as businessmen, HangZhou people would be an educationalist.

On our way to HangZhou, we dropped by at a motorway rest area to release some weight off. After losing some weight (few grams I presumed), we felt hungry and bought some famous HangZhou meat dumplings to fill up the gap and to heat up our body as temperature in that morning has dropped to around 12°C. 🙂

As we were approaching HangZhou, the environment changed. Instead of concretes and skyscrapers, we saw trees, rivers, canals, farms and bungalows at both sides of the motorway. Yes! Farmers are staying in huge 4-storey-Bungalows.

Our first destination of HangZhou city tour was WanSong Academy. It was the famous academy in old China where the chinese legend, butterfly lovers, Zhu Ying Tai and Liang Shan Po met each other. Their love story was being screened several times and is described as the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet. I’m not a big fan of them though. What I admired most was the environment inside the academy campus. Beautiful pines, misty weather, fresh air and clear water were what it has, and what I appreciated.

After the entrance is a foot path leading to the main courtyard of the academy where huge arch, gardens and fish pond are connecting each other.

There was a young lady tour guide who led us to wander around the campus.

For students (hundred years ago) who wanted to study in WanSong Academy, he needed to walk up to the classroom at hill top! (Cool isn’t it?)

Other than classrooms and student hostel are pines and woods. The academy was surrounded by beautiful scenery and refreshing air.

Other than pines and garden are these statues of those famous students graduated from the academy.

Once we reached the top, there were still doors after doors to pass through before reaching the classrooms. Just imagine how difficult was it before knowledge could be acquired in old time. We are so lucky now!

In chinese culture, we pay highest respect to our parents at home, and to our teachers at school. In WanSong Academy, there was a memorial hall where students pay their tribute to the master of academic, Kung Zhi.

There were museums for the WanSong Academy and also these 2 guys, Liang ShanPo and Zhu YingTai. Can you spot which one is Zhu? She was actually dressed up as male in order to study in the academy, and later fell in love with Liang…

Looking out to these bamboo garden from the loo’s window was actually a pleasant experience! 🙂

Thoughtfully designed staircase where you would see lesser steps from top (as opposed to the photo above where 7 times more steps are seen from bottom hill!) which meant that there are a lot more ‘steps’ for a person to reach the top of his carreer but only a few steps for him to fall down…. 🙂

From these photos, you could imagine how cold was the weather there. I wore long johns and jumpers but still feeling cold, especially when it was windy and overcasting sky. We left WanSong Academy with good impressions. We started to realise why HangZhou is claimed to be one of the most preferred city to stay in China…. what a paradise. Subscribe to Travel Feeder’s RSS feeds for coming stories about Xi Hu of HangZhou. – Travel Feeder.

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.