A visit to Hangzhou, China: "Heaven on Earth"

Colin Windsor

So wrote Marco Polo when he visited this city around 1280, and the Chinese are still working hard to keep it so. The town grew large with the completion, around 700, of the Grand Canal from Beijing, still the largest man-made waterway. It now has six million people. I arrived at the busy bus terminal, straight from Shanghai airport, quite lost and with only a small-scale map. I did not need to worry. Policemen were nearby. They stood on street corners, alone and apparently with no crimes to solve. They had no guns, no truncheons, and no cars, but they could not have been more helpful. My first need was to find a loo, and one showed me the way, and waited for me before directing me to the Youth Hostel. The best way was over the hill overlooking the lovely "West Lake". I was immediately in another world of peaceful trees pagodas, sculptures, flowers and distant views of the lake. Near the top of the hill I heard Chinese music. They were amateurs playing in a little pagoda, their two-string violin, a flute, and a coteau. Heaven indeed!

The Hangzhou Youth Hostel had the finest position. It was next to the Lake, and just across from the Ferrari dealer and the Art Institute. As always in Youth Hostels, it was immediately a home away from home with friendships easily made. There were some posh family rooms, some overlooking the lake, but I opted for the 8-bed dorms at just £3 a night. They were mixed! My first two nights were with 5 girls and just 2 other men. It seemed very odd the first night, but everybody behaved with exemplary decorum. After a couple of nights it seemed completely normal and unremarkable. It will seem quirky and unnatural to go back to male only dorms. The hostel had the nicest food freshly cooked on the spot by the resident cook. My breakfast was soup with tiny whole shrimps, and little suet pudding bags of tasty vedgetables.

I was here as my Florence colleague Lorenzo Capineri and I had a session on radar detection of mines and buried objects within the big 800 strong PIERS05 electromagnetics conference. The conference centre and hotel was another world: vast, American style, and way up-town. But I had the nicest walk along the edge of the lake each morning. Between 7.00 and 9.00am all the Chinese come out to do their exercises. There were perhaps 50 groups of a dozen each doing their TaiChi to a little CD player. One group did dancing, some used swords, some played badminton. There were no joggers. At the end of the lake I would catch a bus. They cost about 10p and were frequent and efficient. Most people clearly had a season ticket. They would wave their handbag in front of black box, which would give a beep. Our hostel rooms had the same high-tech entry system.

The lake was easy and pleasant to walk round in a day. Although artificial it had existed for 1500 years. The picture shows the famous "Scholar's Bridge" near the youth hostel with the great brass buffalo half submerged in the water. The bridge was all of granite and build to last for ever. The walks and gardens were looked after by an army of ladies, of all ages, with bamboo brushes and a pan. They would pick up every leaf! The walks and trees were all floodlit, and even late at night were full of happy people, taking the air and enjoying the beauty.

To the south of the lake, the picture shows Xizhao (Sunset Hill) with the newly restored Leifeng Pagoda. Although originally for storing Buddist sacred scrolls, it is now a tourist location. Escalators take you to the top of the hill and a lift takes you to the top of the pagoda! The view takes in the whole city, the whole lake and all the surrounding hills which rise quite steeply from the plane of the city. All around the inside the top story is a giant painting of view from the pagoda made in ancient times. All the time I was there, the weather was not clear, but a soft, misty light that made the lines of hills recede back into space.

The lake contains two causeways of ancient origin, which stretch across its western and northern shores like a giant promenade. The Western Su causeway dates from 1090, when the lake was dredged and the causeway created from the material. Today they are full of walkers and cyclists enjoying the every changing views of the islands. At the Northern end of the west causeway are the most beautiful gardens I saw. They belonged to Quyuan Park (Crooked Courtyard) an old winery dating back to the Song Dynasty 1000 years ago. The water gardens were immaculate, full of lotus flowers and sculptures. While I was there one of its old buildings was being used as a film set for a school class room of ancient China. I watched as the children, all dressed in traditional smocks, threw their books into the air at some celebration.

It was an unexpected delight in China that strangers will talk to you. Going back to Shanghai by train a girl spoke to me while we waited on the platform. She turned out to be good at English, indeed a teacher, and charming to talk to. We shared our meagre food and drink in the very crowded carriage, and the two-hour journey passed in a flash. I felt I had made a true friend by the time we arrived at Shanghai.

But where is God among all this beauty and kindness? The young Chinese were surprisingly open. Religion is now tolerated, but not in the Communist Party, which you still have to join if you want to get on. The pagodas might have Buddhist origins but they are now for tourists not worshippers. The lower picture shows the People's Square in Shanghai where I arrived on my way home. The church is "A monument under the protection of Shanghai municipality." It was rather tastefully converted into offices in the shadows of the great new skyscrapers. They have swept God off the streets, along with the leaves, but not from the people's souls.