China · Zhejiang
Hangzhou
The lake Chinese painters and poets have been composing for a thousand years, ringed by causeways and pagodas, with the country's most famous green tea grown on the hills behind.
Hangzhou grew rich as the southern terminus of the Grand Canal, then ruled China for a century and a half as the Southern Song capital - by some counts the largest city on earth, and the one Marco Polo called the finest anywhere. What survives is West Lake: not a wild lake but a composed one, ringed with causeways, pagodas, tea hills and temples that Chinese poets and painters have been arranging into set scenes for a thousand years. Around it now stands a tech city of glass towers, with the lake still the point of the place.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
Mandarin Chinese
Currency
CNY
Timezone
UTC+8
Why you'll love Hangzhou
The lake a thousand years of deliberate landscaping - two causeways, an island of stone lanterns, a pagoda on the southern hill - walked, cycled or crossed by boat rather than simply looked at.
Tea Longjing is grown on the hills right behind the lake, and you can walk out of the city into the terraces, the drying pans and the villages that give the tea its name.
Lingyin one of the great Chan monasteries, still working, with hundreds of Buddhist figures carved into the limestone crags opposite it - some of the oldest stone sculpture in southern China.
The canal the Grand Canal ends here, and its last few kilometres are a lived-in waterfront of stone bridges, converted mills and museums rather than a monument.
Best time to visit
Oct-Nov
18-24° days
30.249° N, 120.205° E
UTC+8 · Asia/Shanghai
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Weather & when to go to Hangzhou
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Oct-Nov
Watch for Jun monsoon flooding risk · Jul-Oct typhoons risk
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Hangzhou
June is the plum rain, when the lower Yangtze's wet season parks over the city and delivers the soggiest weeks of the year; July and August follow on hot and sticky inside the typhoon window. Crowding is its own axis: the lake shore is close to unwalkable over the national holidays.
Top things to do in Hangzhou
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West Lake - walk the Su and Bai causeways
scenic culture arts 👍 PopularThe lake is not scenery you view from one spot but a circuit you move through: the Bai Causeway from the Broken Bridge to Solitary Hill, the longer Su Causeway with its six arched bridges, and boats out to the island with three stone lanterns standing in the water. Roughly fifteen kilometres around; hire a bike, or walk one shore and boat back.
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Lingyin Temple and Feilai Feng - the grottoes across the stream
history culture arts 👍 PopularOne of the oldest and largest Chan Buddhist monasteries in China, founded in the fourth century, burnt and rebuilt more times than anyone counts, and still a working temple thick with incense smoke. The real surprise is opposite the gate: Feilai Feng, a limestone crag riddled with caves and carved with hundreds of Buddhist figures from the tenth century on, including a famous fat, laughing Maitreya.
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Longjing tea villages - walk the terraces to Meijiawu
food scenic culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedDragon Well tea grows on the hills immediately west of the lake, and the villages that produce it - Longjing itself, Manjuelong, Meijiawu - are a bus ride and then a walk apart through the terraces. Families sell from their front rooms and pan-fire the leaf by hand in the spring. The tea museum nearby is genuinely good on how the leaf is made.
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The Grand Canal - Gongchen Bridge and the Qiaoxi quarter
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedThe canal from Beijing ends in Hangzhou, and its last stretch is the most rewarding part of the city away from the lake. Gongchen Bridge is a high three-arch stone hump from the Ming; the Qiaoxi lanes beside it hold old warehouses turned into museums of fans, umbrellas, knives and craft. Canal boats work as a scheduled service, not a tour.
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Hangzhou cuisine - West Lake vinegar fish and Dongpo pork
food 👍 PopularZhejiang cooking is light, sweet-leaning and fussy about freshness. The set pieces are West Lake vinegar fish, a whole grass carp under a sweet-sour glaze; Dongpo pork, braised belly in wine and soy, named for the poet-governor; beggar's chicken baked in lotus leaf and clay; and shrimp stir-fried with Longjing leaves and their steeping water.
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Leifeng Pagoda - the sunset tower and the White Snake
scenic historyThe tower on the southern shore, rebuilt in the early 2000s over the excavated brick base of the original, which stood from the tenth century until it collapsed in 1924. Lifts and escalators take you up to a full circuit of the lake from above, best in the last hour of light. It is also where the legend of the White Snake is set.
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Hefang Street and Hu Qing Yu Tang - the old town's trade lanes
shopping history foodThe old town's surviving trade street, running under Wushan hill: silk, tea, chops carved while you wait, snack stalls and the scissors firm that has been here since the Qing. Halfway along, Hu Qing Yu Tang is a nineteenth-century pharmacy built around a courtyard, still dispensing and half museum. Touristy, busy, and the one place the pre-modern city is legible.
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Southern Song Imperial Kiln Museum - the capital's celadon works
history culture artsHangzhou was the Southern Song capital for a century and a half, and almost nothing of it stands above ground. The clearest trace is this kiln site on the southern slopes, where the court's own celadon was fired: excavated dragon kilns under cover, waster heaps of broken glaze, and a collection of the pale crackled wares themselves.
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Nine Creeks and Eighteen Gullies - the tea-hill stream walk
scenic nature wildlifeA stream walk in the hills between the lake and the Qiantang, following a shallow creek up through tea terraces, bamboo and a scatter of stone crossings. Two to three hours at a stroll, mostly shaded, and the one place near the centre where the city noise drops away entirely. Ends near a tea house; buses run from both ends.
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Six Harmonies Pagoda - the Qiantang River watchtower
history scenicAn octagonal brick-and-timber tower on a bluff over the Qiantang, first raised in the tenth century as a lighthouse and a charm against the river's tidal bore. Thirteen exterior storeys, seven real ones inside, with a stair to the top and a view of the river and the rail bridge. Quiet compared with the lake, and a short bus ride south.
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Xixi National Wetland Park - boardwalks and punt channels
nature wildlife scenicA few square kilometres of fish ponds, reed channels and persimmon trees kept from development on the western edge of the city, crossed by boardwalks and worked by electric punts. It is managed rather than wild, and best treated as a half day of slow water and birdlife when the lake shore feels like too much.
Best areas to stay in Hangzhou
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Hubin and the north lakeshore
First-time visitors $$Lakefront shopping streets minutes from the water
Explore hotels in Hubin and the north lakeshore →
Wushan and Hefang Street
Old-town atmosphere $Old-town lanes under a temple hill
Explore hotels in Wushan and Hefang Street →
Qianjiang New City
Business and river views $$$Riverside towers and civic architecture
Explore hotels in Qianjiang New City →
Longjing and the tea villages
Tea hills and quiet $$Tea terraces and village guesthouses
Explore hotels in Longjing and the tea villages →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Hangzhou
Getting to & around Hangzhou
Getting there
Fly into Xiaoshan east of the city, or arrive by high-speed train at Hangzhou East, under an hour from Shanghai.
Flight
Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport (HGH)
The airport sits on the far side of the Qiantang, roughly forty minutes to an hour from the lake depending on traffic. The metro runs into the terminal and is the reliable option at any hour; airport coaches serve a handful of city points, and taxis work but bridge traffic is unpredictable. It is mainly a domestic hub, so many long-haul arrivals route via Shanghai.
Train
Hangzhou East railway station
The main high-speed hub, east of the centre and on the metro. Shanghai is under an hour, Suzhou and Nanjing one to two hours, Huangshan and Ningbo around the same, and Beijing or Guangzhou a long single ride. Seats vanish around the national holidays, so book as far ahead as you can.
Train
Hangzhou City station (Chengzhan)
The older station, much closer to the lake and worth taking when a service stops there. Hangzhou has more than one long-distance station, including a newer one on the western side of the city that handles part of the inland traffic, so check which station your ticket names before you set off.
Coach
City bus stations
Coaches leave from several stations around the ring road for the water towns, Moganshan and the smaller Zhejiang towns the railway skips. For anywhere with a high-speed station the train wins easily.
Getting around
Metro
A large network reaching the airport, both main railway stations, the lake shore and the wetland park. Air-conditioned, signed in English, and by far the fastest way across the city.
TBC
Bike share
Hangzhou ran one of the first big public bike schemes in the world and the city is flat, with lake-shore paths built for it. Docked bikes and app bikes both operate.
TBC
Bus
Dense and cheap, including sightseeing loops around the lake and the routes up to Lingyin, Longjing and the tea villages that the metro does not reach.
TBC
Walking
The lake circuit is about fifteen kilometres and the causeways cut it shorter. Flat, paved and shaded, and the only honest way to see the shore.
Free
Taxi and ride-hailing
Ride-hailing is the default and metered taxis still work. Traffic around the lake is heavy at weekends, and several lakeside roads close to cars at busy times.
TBC
Boat
Scheduled cruise boats and small hand-rowed craft cross West Lake to the islands, and a canal service runs along the Grand Canal through the northern city.
TBC
Day trips from Hangzhou
Wuzhen
Full dayCanal water town
The best known of the Yangtze delta water towns, and frankly the most managed: two walled sections of stone quays, arched bridges and black-tiled roofs along a canal, with dye-cloth yards, a wine distillery and shadow puppets kept running as exhibits. The eastern half is a half-day; the western half is the one to see lit after dark, which argues for staying over.
Getting there
bus | car | tour
About 1-1.5 hr each way by coach
Shaoxing
Full dayCanal town and rice wine
Lu Xun's home town and the source of China's best-known rice wine, still a working canal town where flat-bottomed boats are poled by foot. The draw is the writer's street, kept as a museum block, plus a Southern Song garden, the tomb attributed to Yu the Great, and jars of yellow wine ageing in the open.
Getting there
train | bus
About 20-30 min by high-speed train, then a local bus or taxi
Suzhou
Full dayClassical garden city
The other half of the old couplet about heaven on earth, and the better city for gardens: half a dozen Ming and Qing scholar gardens on the UNESCO list, each a compressed landscape of rock, water and framed windows inside a walled courtyard. Add the canal lanes at Pingjiang Road and the silk museum, and it is a long but easy day.
Getting there
train
Roughly 1.5 hr each way by high-speed train
Moganshan
1-2 daysBamboo hill station
A ridge of bamboo forest north of the city that foreign residents of Shanghai turned into a hot-weather retreat a century ago, leaving stone villas, a church and a swimming pool scattered through the trees. Now a mix of restored villas and small hotels, with walking paths along the ridge and a sharp drop in temperature on the way up.
Getting there
car | train | bus | tour
About 1.5-2 hr each way by road, or by train to Deqing and then a taxi
Yanguan and the Qiantang bore
Half dayRiver tidal bore
The Qiantang's funnel-shaped mouth throws up one of the largest tidal bores anywhere, a wall of water running upriver against the current past the old viewing town of Yanguan. A spectacle since the Song, it runs on the lunar calendar and peaks around the mid-autumn festival. People have been swept off the embankment; stand well back.
Getting there
car | train | bus | tour
About 1-1.5 hr each way by road, or by train to Haining
A little history of Hangzhou
Hangzhou is a made place. The lake was a lagoon that silted off from the Qiantang estuary, and it has been dredged, banked and planted by successive governors ever since - two of them poets whose causeways still carry their names. The Grand Canal reached the city in the seventh century and turned a provincial county town into the southern end of China's main artery, rich on grain, silk and tea.
Its peak came after disaster. When the Jurchen took the northern capital in 1127, the Song court fled south and settled here, and for the next century and a half Hangzhou - Lin'an, the temporary capital that never stopped being temporary - was probably the largest and wealthiest city on earth, with printing, paper money, restaurants and night markets that startled every visitor who wrote about it. The Mongols took it intact in 1276, which is why Marco Polo's account describes a working city rather than a ruin. It never ruled again. The Taiping wars gutted it in the 1860s, and what stands around the lake today is largely a careful nineteenth- and twentieth-century reconstruction of a much older idea.
The Grand Canal is pushed through to Hangzhou, making it the southern terminus of the waterway to the north.
The poet Bai Juyi arrives as governor and dredges the lake to irrigate the fields; the northern causeway carries his name.
Hangzhou becomes capital of the Wuyue kingdom, which raises Leifeng Pagoda, endows Lingyin and later surrenders to the Song without a fight.
Su Shi, governor and poet, clears the lake of weed and piles the spoil into the long causeway across it.
The Song court, driven out of the north, formally makes Hangzhou its capital under the name Lin'an.
Mongol armies take the city undamaged; the account attributed to Marco Polo describes it as the finest in the world.
Taiping and imperial forces fight over Hangzhou through two sieges, destroying much of the city and its lakeside temples.
Leifeng Pagoda, standing since the tenth century, collapses; the present tower was built over its base much later.
West Lake is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as a cultural landscape rather than a monument.
Know before you go
Payment
Cash preferred
English
Limited
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type A / I
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+86
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The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Hangzhou
▸ When is the best time to visit Hangzhou?
Autumn, and it is not close. October and November are the clearest, mildest stretch of the year, and the osmanthus comes out over the whole city in the first half of that window. Spring is pretty but wet, summer is hot and sticky, and winter is cold, grey and damp without much snow to show for it.
▸ Is Hangzhou worth more than a day trip from Shanghai?
Yes. The train makes a day trip easy and thousands do it, but a day buys you the crowded eastern shore and nothing else. Two nights gets you the causeways at dawn, Lingyin and the grottoes, the tea hills and the canal quarter, which is the city rather than the postcard.
▸ How bad are the crowds at West Lake?
At the national holidays, genuinely bad: the shore path moves at a shuffle and the causeways fill end to end. Weekends bring a smaller version of the same. The fix is timing rather than avoidance - be out by seven, walk the western and southern shores instead of the Hubin side, and head inland to the tea hills by mid-morning.
▸ When is the tea actually picked?
The prized Longjing pick is the one before the Qingming festival in early April, a narrow few weeks of small, tight leaf that sells for many times what the later grades fetch. Pickers are out on the terraces through spring, and the villages are at their busiest and most interesting then, weather notwithstanding.
▸ What about the summer heat and the rains?
June is the plum rain: weeks of low cloud and drizzle turning to downpours, and the wettest stretch of the year in the lower Yangtze. July and August swap that for heat and humidity that make midday outdoors unpleasant, with typhoon remnants possible off the coast. The lotus on the lake is at its best right through it.
▸ Do I need to book anything ahead?
Expect the major sites to run on timed online reservations rather than a ticket window, usually tied to a phone number and an ID document, and expect that to be the thing that catches you out at Lingyin and the museums. Trains and holiday-period hotels need booking well ahead. The lake shore itself is free and open ground.
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