The Pure and Fresh Winter Beauty of West Lake in Hangzhou

Plan your Hangzhou tour? January is the coldest month in Hangzhou, the capital city of Zhejiang Province, about 2 hours’ drive to the south-west of the metropolitan Shanghai.

Hangzhou is a garden city noted for its charming West Lake, a site of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage. For various reasons, you are going to visit Hangzhou during the coldest January or February, the garden city still won’t let you disappointed. It will embrace your with its pureness and freshness of the winter scenes.

Yesterday Hangzhou fell to the lowest temperature at – 6 degrees celsius. Braving the extreme coldness in Hangzhou climate history, at noon I took the shuttle boat from Huagang Wharf to the largest island in West Lake. The island is known as Xiaoyingzhou, or popularly nicknamed “Three Mirrors Reflecting the Moon”.

One of the merits of visiting Hangzhou in winter is the less tourist crowd with more time and space for your own. The return boat ticket costs 55 yuan. I was the only person in the boat cruising from Huagang Wharf to the island.

Xiaoyingzhou, or popularly known as “Three Mirrors Reflecting the Moon” is a typical Chinese gardening art with limpid lakes in the form of Chinese character – 田. Pavilions, zigzag bridges, lakes, trees and bamboos are harmoniously set in the island.

Leftover snow still blanketed the island landscape here and there in a delicate way. About 80% of the lake surfaces were frozen with thin layers of ice. It is said that the frozen surface scenes in the island haven’t been seen in winter in the past 7 years.

There weren’t t many tourists on the island yesterday. I walked around the island leisurely and took some photos of the winter landscape of the charming island. Please share some of my pictures below taken yesterday.