China Travel Diary: Day 4

So in that day, we started exploring Hang zhou. Hang zhou is a beautiful city in the capital of Zhejiang province. The city's West Lake is its best-known attraction. 

We started our day by going to the West Lake (in chinese: 西湖，xī hú), which is a freshwater lake in Hangzhou. Numerous temples, pagodas, gardens, and artificial islands are found within the lake. This lake was made as a UNESCO heritage sites in 2011.

I took a boat, to stroll around the lake

The view from my boat

From the lake, we went to the Yue Fei temple which is located near the lake. This temple was built in honour of Yue Fei, a general of the Southern Song Dynasty who fought against the Jurchen Jin Dynasty during the Jin-song wars. 

Me in front of the statue of Yue Fei 

This is the statues of Lady Wang and Qin hui 

And this is the statues of Moqi Xie and Zhang Jun.

This is the Kneeling Iron statues. So basically, there was a long history for this incident. A novel about this incident, titled Dong Chuang Ji (東窗記; "Tale of the Eastern Window") was written during the Ming Dynasty by an anonymous writer. 

Yue Fei was accused and conspired, and put to death. Because these four people took part in Yue Fei's death, their statues were made to kneel before the Yue Fei's tomb. These statues have been spat, cursed, hit, kicked, and even urinated by people because of the hatred towards them.

Yue Fei's tomb in front of the four statues. 

Then, after our visit to Yue Fei temple, we walked out, and had a lunch. 

As I told you, Hang Zhou is a very beautiful city. The view when you are walking throught the streets of Hang Zhou are breathtaking. These are the photos which I took when we were walking. 

(Still in the temple's area) 

The streets (outside the temple) 

After we finished our lunch, we went to visit Leifeng Pagoda. 

The real pagoda collapsed in 1924, but it was rebuilt in 2002. 

This is the original pagoda that collapsed

We went inside and up the pagoda, and went to the balcony (I forgot which floor the balcony is) but the view from the balcony was amazingggggg! 

 

As you go down, there's also a carving (not sure if it is a carving but it looks like one) that will show you the story of Bai shu zhen. 

Then we went down the pagoda, and I found a very nice spot to take photo. So.. I took a photo while waiting for the others to come. 

From the Leifeng pagoda, we went on to try Long Jing tea, which is famous in China, and it has so many benefits for us! 

After drinking the tea, we were heading to another city, Suzhou. Our day 4 journey stops here, as it was night already when we reached Suzhou, so we had our dinner, and went back to hotel to take a rest. 

See you on my next post people! ~