Discover Hangzhou
West Lake
西湖
The lake that made Hangzhou famous: a UNESCO-listed landscape of causeways, pagodas and willow-lined banks that Chinese poets have been writing about for a thousand years. The whole shoreline is a free public park, so you can simply walk in at any point.
The story
What makes this place special
West Lake was originally a shallow coastal bay that silt cut off from the Qiantang River, and it has only survived as a lake because successive officials kept dredging it out of the swamp it would otherwise have become. Bai Juyi dredged it in 822 and piled the spoil into what became the Bai Causeway; Su Shi did the same in 1089, creating the Su Causeway, and his 1090 memorial requesting the dredging is the first official use of the name West Lake. The Yanggong Causeway followed under Yang Mengying in 1508. Almost everything a visitor admires here is engineered spoil, and the whole landscape was inscribed by UNESCO in 2011 as a cultural landscape rather than a natural one.
What you’ll discover
The lake is about 6.4 square kilometres, roughly 3.2km north to south and 2.8km east to west, with a shoreline of around 15km, and three causeways chop it into separate basins so that you are usually walking along water on both sides. The east shore is city - Hubin, shops, the Broken Bridge - while the west and south shores are hills, tea slopes and temples. Gushan is the only natural island; Lesser Yingzhou, Mid-Lake Pavilion and Ruan Gong Islet were all built from dredged mud in the Ming and Qing. The classical Ten Scenes, named in the Song and carved on steles in Qianlong's hand, are the named viewpoints people hunt for around the shore.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- The distance is the thing first-timers get wrong. A full circuit of the shore is around 15km and takes most of a day on foot. Pick one or two causeways, or hire a bike - the public bike system and the shoreline cycle paths are the standard local answer - or use the lakeside electric sightseeing bus.
- It is free and has no gate. There is no single entrance and no ticket for the lake itself; only specific sights inside it (Leifeng Pagoda, Three Pools boat, Lingyin, Guo's Villa) are ticketed. Anyone who tells you otherwise at a kiosk is selling you something.
- Walk the causeways, which have water on both sides, and skip the eastern city shore unless you are headed somewhere. Su Causeway is the long one from the south-west to the north-west; Bai Causeway is the short one at the north end to Gushan and is the better choice on a tight schedule.
- Go anticlockwise from Broken Bridge in the early morning and you will be in front of the crowds all day, because the tour groups start at Broken Bridge and work the same way at about 9.30am.
- The best light is late. The lake faces its hills to the west, so sunset from the eastern shore or from Gushan, and the lit pagodas afterwards, is a better photograph than anything at midday - and the crowds thin sharply after about 6pm.
When to come
Early morning for mist on the water and empty causeways, or the last two hours of daylight for the light on the hills. Season changes the lake completely: lotus in July and August, osmanthus in late September and October, and the one time to come for the Broken Bridge is after snow. Avoid the first week of October and the May holiday, when the causeways are shoulder to shoulder.
Getting around
The flattest major sight in China. The shoreline promenade and the Su, Bai and Yanggong causeways are level paved or boardwalk surfaces with no steps, and a wheelchair can cover the whole lakeside circuit; the limit is distance, not gradient. Lakeside electric shuttle buses run the main shore road and cover the long stretches. The ticketed sights around the lake are another matter - Leifeng Pagoda has a lift, but the hill temples and Gushan's upper paths have steps, and the island boats involve a step down into the hull.
Worth knowing before you go
The full shoreline loop is about 15 km. Rent a bike or use the public e-bike share rather than trying to walk it all; the quiet west side (Yanggong Causeway) is far more pleasant than the packed east shore.
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