Shanghai Tan

Two weeks ago I went to Hangzhou [杭州] with the intention to spend one whole day photographying the city’s famous attractions, such as the West Lake [西湖] and some famous tower pagodas. Unfortunalely for my laziness and lack of planning, I was not able to buy a return ticket ahead of time, so at the last minute, I had to accept a return ticket of noon time, which means that I only visited Hangzhou for 90 minutes in total because I arrived at 9:40am and had to return to the train station around 11:15am!

But the moment I stepped out of the station, I didn’t regret about my misfortune. The city was so polluted that the smock was terrible, worse than at Shanghai! Visibility was extremely low, I’ve never seen such thick smock before. My plan was to visit the Liu He Tower [六和塔], which has a pretty view of the Qian Tang river [钱塘江] as well as the famous bridge of Qian Tang [钱塘江大桥]. Actually the name of the Zhejiang province [浙江省] was derived from the name of this river.

However, as soon as I got off the taxi and try to take a picture of the tower from across the street, I already had the impression that it’ll be a bad photo day… Nevertheless, I still try to shoot the tower as much as I could. I also climb on the 13-stories tower to take a view of the river, since I was already there.

A heavily processed photo of the Liu He Tower shot across the street, at a bad day...	Liu He Tower at close distance
Qian Tang river and its famous bridge built at 1959 as the longest and unique 2-floors bridge of that time.	Qian Tang river and its famous bridge built at 1959 as the longest and unique 2-floors bridge of that time.

Beside the barely visible view of the river, there isn’t anything interesting in the tower, so I got off there after only 15 minutes. But while walking around the tower, I found something quite interesting. There is a park underneath the tower which has a collection of miniature towers from all around China, the famous ones of course. I spend the rest of my short time hunting those towers. They were not built like a garden with clear sidewalk and clear view, they were built in the jungle, among the trees and at different spots on the hill, very interested I felt! The high density trees hide my view from the thick gray smock, giving me a confortable walk in the forest, and quiet.

Miniature tower	Miniature tower
Miniature tower	Miniature tower
Miniature tower	Miniature tower
Miniature tower	Miniature tower

Although touristic material still employs the ancien famous slogan that sings Hangzhou as the Heaven on Earth [上有天堂，下有苏杭] , I can’t help but thinking that, not only it no longer is the heaven, but I can’t even see the sky in Hangzhou now! Sadly indeed! But I think I’ll return there once again during Winter, hopefully the sky will be clearer next time.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 10:47 am and is filed under Shanghai Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.