Hangzhou City Walk: The Lake's West Side, Slowly

Twenty years old, five hundred deep

At half past six in the morning the only other person on Jihong Bridge is a man with a thermos, watching a night heron pick its way along the far bank of Yuhu Bay. No ticket gate brought him here, no queue is forming behind him, and ten minutes' walk away — across one causeway and one island — the east shore of the same lake is already warming up for the loudest daily crowd in Hangzhou. West Lake has two tempers, and they are separated by about a kilometre of water.

The quiet side is the western shore: a Ming-dynasty causeway under a tunnel of plane trees, and behind it a chain of bays — Yuhu Bay, Wuguitan, Maojiabu — that were farmland and fish ponds within living memory, re-flooded and replanted in 2003. This walk runs the whole line slowly, south to north, with one small garden as its only ticket and the city waiting at the end. It is not the famous West Lake. It is the one the famous one is photographed from.

The walk at a glance

Set up before you start walking

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Walking the west side, south to north

1. First decision: walk it south to north, and start before nine

   Direction is the whole strategy. Starting at the southern end puts the emptiest water first — Yuhu Bay at breakfast hour belongs to herons and dog-walkers — sets the walk's one lunch in the middle at Maojiabu, saves the ticketed garden for early afternoon when its tour groups have gone, and finishes on North Hill Street, where buses, taxis and the lakeside city are all within reach. Run it the other way and you end at the far southern tip with tired legs and the weakest transport on the lake. Aim to be walking by nine; on a summer day, by eight.

2. Getting to the start: Prince Bay and the south end of the causeway

   Make for Prince Bay Park on Nanshan Road — a short taxi or bus ride from anywhere on the south or east shore — and use its lawns and the Flower Harbour parkland beside it as the warm-up rather than the main event. The causeway proper begins where Yanggong Causeway meets the Hupao Road junction, a few minutes north. Top up water here: the west shore has almost no shops, and the next reliable drink may be a Maojiabu tea house an hour and a half away.

3. Segment one: Yuhu Bay — the first, stillest water

   Leave the causeway at its first westward opening and loop down into Yuhu Bay, the broad, marshy inlet that opens the Santai Yunshui country. The landmark is Jihong Bridge, a long, low, white-railed zigzag that seems to float a hand's breadth above the surface — cross it slowly, because this is the walk's best early photograph and its best birdwatching: herons and egrets work the shallows, and in lotus season the bay fills with flower. Then climb back to the causeway and continue north under the plane trees. If you do only one detour all day, this is the one that sets the west side's terms: space, water, quiet.

4. Segment two: Wuguitan — the pool nobody markets

   The next bay north is smaller and stranger. Wuguitan — Turtle Pool — is a reed-fringed backwater where the path drops off the causeway, threads between ponds and comes out at the water's edge with the hills close behind. There is no famous view here and almost never a crowd; what there is, is shade, frogsong in summer and the sense of a lake that has not been arranged for you. A short path inland leads to the tomb and shrine of Yu Qian, the Ming minister who saved the dynasty's capital and was executed anyway — Hangzhou buried its most loyal son beside its quietest pool. The shrine hall is small and usually empty, and its courtyard is the one place on the route where you can feel how recently this shore was countryside. Give the pair twenty unhurried minutes.

5. Segment three: Maojiabu — wetland, egret island and the lunch stop

   Maojiabu is the west shore's living village and the walk's natural midpoint. The shore path runs through reed beds and over small bridges, past a tiny island colonised by night herons — look for them standing motionless in the waterside trees at dusk and dawn. This was once the landing for the pilgrim path up to Lingyin Temple, and the village still feeds travellers: farmhouse restaurants and tea houses along the shore lanes serve Hangzhou dishes and local green tea at village, not scenic-area, prices. The hand-rowed boats that work the west-side channels also gather near the village piers, if the water is calling louder than lunch. Sit down properly here. The second half of the walk is shorter than the first, but it contains the garden, and you want an unhurried hour for it.

6. Segment four: Guozhuang — the one ticket, and how to walk a borrowed view

   Guozhuang stands at No. 28 on the causeway, just north of Maojiabu: a private garden begun in 1907, and the finest surviving example around the lake of a garden that borrows its scenery. Buy the ticket (¥10, 08:00–17:00) and walk it in its two intended halves. The inner half is enclosed — courtyards, halls, a still pond, rockwork — composed like a painting you stand inside. The outer half opens a wall of windows and a waterside pavilion straight onto West Lake itself, so the lake becomes the garden's largest feature and its cheapest: it was never owned, only framed. Forty-five minutes to an hour does it justice; the chrysanthemum and rose shows in season are worth slowing for.

7. Segment five: Flower Nursery, Quyuan Fenghe and the exit into the city

   North of Guozhuang the causeway runs its last green kilometre past the Hangzhou Flower Nursery — worth a wander when anything is in bloom — and delivers you to Quyuan Fenghe, the lotus park at the causeway's northern end, where in summer the water is a field of pink. You are now back in the city's orbit: North Hill Street runs east from here past the Gushan museums toward Broken Bridge, and buses and taxis are plentiful. Finish properly: a bowl of noodles or a pot of tea on North Hill Street, with the lake's noisy east shore ahead of you only if you actually want it. Every bridge crossing on the causeway behind you was also an exit — that is the route's built-in mercy, and the limits below explain how to use it.

When this plan breaks — and the questions everyone asks

Sources and status

Prices, schedules and booking channels change. Recheck the details that matter before you travel.

• UNESCO World Heritage — West Lake Cultural Landscape of HangzhouVerifiedThe listing behind the landscape: inscribed 24 June 2011, criteria (ii)(iii)(vi), 3,322.88 ha — the causeways and gardens are named components of the property
• West Lake destination portal — Yanggong Causeway entryReference ~The causeway's documented length (about 3.4 km), its six bridges and the sights it strings together along the west shore
• Hangzhou News — the three causeways of West LakeReference ~Municipal news portal history: Yang Mengying's 1508 dredging built the western causeway from the lake's own silt, with six bridges answering Su Causeway's six
• Hangzhou city portal — the West Lake protection project and the listingReference ~City portal retrospective: the comprehensive protection project from 2002, the rebuilt Yanggong Causeway scenic area opened in 2003, and the road to the 2011 listing
• Hangzhou Net — the west-side water route through Maojiabu and Yuhu BayReference ~The west-side water world in municipal coverage: the Maojiabu–Wuguitan–Yuhu Bay chain, its planted shallows and its waterbirds, including the night-heron island
• Hangzhou News — the old bridge hidden in West Lake's depthsReference ~Hangzhou News on the causeway's surviving old bridge and its 1508 origins — the deepest single read on why this shore looks the way it does