Hangzhou - Enchanting Magic

"There is heaven in the sky and Hangzhou on earth"
- Chinese Saying

It is a magical city around the older part of the city - the ancient West lake. A renowned city in China for centuries, an ancient capital, Inhabitants famed for their refined tastes in culture and food.

Marco Polo supposedly visited Hangzhou in the late 13th century and was very impressed with it. His book refers to the city as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world." Although he exaggerated that the city was over one hundred miles in diameter and had 12,000 stone bridges, he still presented elegant prose about the country: "The number and wealth of the merchants, and the amount of goods that passed through their hands, was so enormous that no man could form a just estimate thereof." (Src. wikipedia reference for Hangzhou)

Apparently right after Marco Polo's visit and the good PR and WOM that followed - the population grew to 3.5 mio making it one of the biggest urban conglomerations of ancient times.

The city also forms the southern end of the grand canal that runs from Beijing forming an ancient water way. There is also an Indian connection to Hangzhou. In the ancient times when cultural exchanges between India and China were quite common (mostly 5th - 6th Century AD) the journey to the holy places of Buddhism used to start from Hangzhou's Lingyin temple. The road of the temple is known as Tianzhu (Indian) temple road.

The more recent connection to India is though is some Indian expats in the local companies and some students studying medicine at the Zheijang University. (Really dont know what they are upto in a provincial university in China !). All the local Indian residents and of course the British tourist wanting to eat his chicken tikka masala have the choice of visiting Omar's Indian food restuarant or Haveli Indian restuarant - both of which are on the Nan Shan Lu on the south side of the West Lake. We had a leisurely lunch one afternoon at Haveli with some delightful aloo jeera, chole, raita and rotis. All served by a smiling pahadi man hailing from Dehradun. Who can say what draws this man to Hangzhou a few thousand kilometers afar though with a kindred essence of serneity and dreaminess to his native.
Today the city though considered a suburb of Shanghai - or more commonly as Shanghai's backyard, Shanghainese and in Chinese in generallove visiting the city.
The west lake area still preserves the ancient charm. Mist covered lakes, verdant green mountains with ancient pagodas and balconies where famed poets sat down to pen verses like
"Sparse shadows slant across the clear water shallow,
Subtle fragrance floats serenely in the moonlight mellow"
Truly a magical place. My wife and I spent a weekend there, in what i hope is the first of many weekends in such a magical place in our backyard.





















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