Where nature is shaped by hand
Jiangnan's classical gardens are portals to the past, in which the echoes of yesterday are alive and growing, Yang Yang reports.
If you want to see artificial hills, go to the Lion Grove and if you prefer water, then go to the Pavilion of Surging Waves. But if you want to see a real natural garden, you must go to the West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
The great Song Dynasty poet Su Shi was appointed head of Hangzhou twice. During his second term in office, to resolve the environmental crisis the West Lake was then facing, he had the lake dredged and enlarged, built the nearly 3-kilometer-long Su Causeway using silt from the lake bed, connected the causeway with six single-arch stone bridges, and planted peach and willow along its length. This project from more than 1,000 years ago created the three famous West Lake views that are still appreciated today — Dawn on the Su Causeway in Spring, Three Pools Mirroring the Moon, and Misty Willows on the Six Bridges. A cultural landmark of what is today Hangzhou, the Su Causeway epitomizes a combination of water conservancy engineering, environmental treatment and landscaping.
