Hangzhou,the Beautiful West Lake and City Sceneries(Hangzhow)
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Formerly transliterated as Hangzhow,Hangzhou is the capital and largest city of Zhejiang Province in eastern China.Governed as a sub-provincial city,and as of 2004,its entire administrative division or prefecture had a registered population of 6.4 million people.The urban agglomeration of the Hangzhou metropolitan area has a resident population of 3.9319 million as of 2003,of which 2.6367 million are permanent residents.There are 1.91 million residents in the six urban core districts.A core city of the Yangtze River Delta,its position on the Hangzhou Bay (180 kilometres southwest of Shanghai)gives it economic power,moreover,it has been one of the most renowned and prosperous cities of China for much of the last 1,000 years,due in part to its beautiful natural scenery;the city’s West Lake is its most well-known attraction.
The celebrated Neolithic culture of Hemudu flourished in Yuyao,an area(now a city) 100 kilometers south-east of Hangzhou,as far back as seven thousand years ago when rice was first cultivated in southeastern China.The area immediately surrounding the modern city of Hangzhou was inhabited five thousand years ago by the Liangzhu culture,so named for the small town of Liangzhu not far to the northwest of Hangzhou where the ancient jade carving civilization was first discovered.
The city of Hangzhou was founded about 2,200 years ago during the Qin Dynasty,but the city wall was not constructed until the Sui Dynasty(591).Now Hangzhou is listed as one of the Seven Ancient Capitals of China.
Hangzhou is at the southern end of China’s Grand Canal which extends to Beijing.The canal evolved over centuries but reached its full length by 609.
Hangzhou was the capital of the Wuvue Kingdom from 907 to 978 during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period.Named Xifu at the time,it was one of the three great centers of culture in southern China during the tenth century,along with Nanjing and Chengdu. Leaders of Wuyue were noted patrons of arts.and especially of Buddhism and Buddhist temple architectures and artworks.It also became a cosmopolitan center,drawing scholars from throughout China and conducting diplomacy not only with neighboring Chinese states,but also with Japan.Korea,and the Khitan Liao Dynasty.
In 1089,while the poet Su Shi(Su Dongpo)was the city’s governor,he used 200,000 workers to construct a 2.8 km long causeway across the West Lake,which Qing Emperor Qianlong considered particularly attractive in the early morning of the spring time.The lake was once a lagoon tens of thousands of years ago.Silt then blocked the way to the sea and the lake was formed.A drill in the lake-bed in 1975 found the sediment of the sea,which confirmed its origin.Artificial preservation prevented the lake from evolving into a marshland.The Su Causeway built by Su Shi,and the Bai Causeway built by Bai Juyi,a Tang Dynasty poet who was once the governor of Hangzhou,were both built out of mud dredged from the bottom of the lake.The lake is surrounded by hills on the northern and western sides.The Baochu Pagoda sits on the Baoshi Hill to the north of the lake.
