History and legend seem to mingle through the breeze in the ancient, waterfront city of Hangzhou. Causeways named for medieval poets wind across its gleaming West Lake to low green hills, as singers and dancers retell the story of the Butterfly Lovers (Hangzhou’s answer to Romeo and Juliet), amid lavish special effects.
Bullet trains race to and from this modern city – home to tech pioneers including Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba – at speeds up to 350 km/h (217 mph). Yet beyond the pace of 21st-century life, ancient stories echo down the years.
And, in a way, that’s no surprise. Perhaps the first distinctively Chinese culture flourished near Hangzhou more than 5,000 years ago. The Liangzhu people built an imperial city, complete with elaborate flood control systems, produced silk, lacquerware, fine ceramics and jade jewellery. Added to the Unesco world heritage list in July this year, the ruined city recently opened to visitors, with its treasures preserved in a landmark museum.
While China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, left his mark on the area two centuries before Christ, Hangzhou began to rise to prominence with the vast Lingyin Temple. According to legend, an Indian monk, Master Huili, fell in love with the serene landscapes around West Lake and founded a Buddhist temple in the hills in AD326. Today, it’s home to many separate structures as well as hundreds of stone carvings, some dating back more than 1,000 years.
The arrival of the Grand Canal reshaped the young city further, connecting the port to hubs across the Yangtze delta. While the barges that ply the canal today are heavy with coal and cement – rather than silk and tea – the shophouses of waterfront Xiaohe Street and the arches of 380-year-old Gongchen Bridge preserve its magic, while the Grand Canal Museum retells the story of its past glory.
Hangzhou’s beauty has always made it a magnet for artists and poets. The eighth-century scholar and administrator Bai Juyi – whose writing would inspire authors as far afield as Japan – hymned West Lake while serving in Hangzhou as governor. A couple of centuries later, Su Shi – a poet, painter, calligrapher, writer, philosopher, and politician in charge of the affairs of Hangzhou – presided over the construction of a north-south embankment in order to dredge the West Lake. Later, people named it “Su Causeway”. Today, West Lake is Unesco-listed for its serene beauty and ancient structures.
When retreating Song emperors made Hangzhou their capital in the 12th century, the city reached the peak of its cultural clout. For many Chinese, this was a golden age, when painting, calligraphy and literature blossomed. Even today, visitors still leave offerings at the West Lake mausoleum of Song dynasty general Yue Fei.
By the time Marco Polo visited in the 13th century, Hangzhou was likely the biggest city on earth, home to about a million citizens – more than 1o times as many as London. The wide streets, silk-clad elite, stately mansions, enormous markets, and glistening pleasure boats led him to describe Hangzhou as, “the finest and most splendid city in the world”.
West Lake has also fuelled legends, such as the tale of Madame White Snake. The story goes, a snake spirit transformed into a beautiful woman who fell in love with a scholar on a West Lake bridge. The pair were separated when an evil monk imprisoned her under the Leifeng Pagoda – until Madame White Snake’s sister tore the tower down. Reconstructed many times over the past 1,000-odd years, the pagoda still stands five storeys tall, across the lake from the haunted tomb of a lovelorn fifth-century courtesan.
By the time of Shakespeare’s birth, Hangzhou was already a famous centre of learning. In fact, the Butterfly Lovers’ sad tale revolves around a young girl who dressed as a boy to get a Hangzhou education, only to fall in love with “his” best friend. The city is still home to world-class universities today.
Over the years, emperors including Kangxi, who ruled for over six decades, and Qianlong, whose life spanned almost the entire 18th century, came to Hangzhou to find serenity and peace. Many of Qianlong’s paintings and engravings of West Lake still survive, as do some tea bushes which, so the story goes, healed his ageing mother.
For centuries, Chinese poets and painters have dreamed of living in Hangzhou, and even in the high-tech era, many still settle here. Up in the hills, they can still pursue the ancient vision: listen to birds chirping in the bamboo forest, stroll shady paths decked with ancient carvings or, like Su Dongpo, put pen to paper and capture the inner peace of a gnarled tree or a sculptural rock.
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