In the last few years, I have visited Hangzhou three times and have always stayed near West Lake. Here is how China Discovery introduces it on its homepage:
“Situated to the west of the central urban area of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, West Lake spans an area of 4,235.76 hectares. It is famous globally for its enchanting natural scenery, the ten poetically named scenic places, and its extensive history and rich cultural background. As the most prominent “Cultural Lake” in Chinese history, West Lake has always been a place of great spiritual significance and is widely known as a “Paradise on Earth.” In June 2011, the West Lake Cultural Landscape of Hangzhou was officially reviewed and added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.”
As with so much else in China, it is huge, and since I’ve been staying at the same hotel every time, I have only seen a fraction of it. Furthermore, I have visited Hangzhou for other things. But whenever I had the time, I ventured out to explore its poetic beauty, and I have created these shots for their art, sometimes abstract, feel with no intention to deliver a documentary.
West Lake is seen as poetic because its gentle balance of mountains, water, mist, and human-made structures embodies the core ideals of Chinese landscape aesthetics. Its shifting seasons create a continuous change of moods that poets and painters have celebrated for centuries. Literary people have fused its meditative nature with philosophy. West Lake became a much-loved subject in painting, a site of political reflection for scholars and officials, and a repository of shared cultural memory. Its walkable, unfolding scenery encourages the contemplative wandering – “you” – that carries so much Chinese artistic sensibility.
I shot the images below with my Xiaomi 14 Ultra, and they have all undergone a gentle Photoshop touch-up. I spent only a couple of days each time, but could have spent weeks. And although I did go to the lake at early dawn every time, I have yet to experience its famous morning mist. Perhaps it is the lake’s message to me: You must come back?
And then I shall add more photos to this essay.
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Far far away, Hangzhou’s skyline
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🪭 Thanks a lot for your attention. I hope you will write a few words below.
Beautiful and great paintings, painted with light and eyes that can see through, behind the light.
That´s why Beauty matters !!! It represents a deeper reality, ecstatic, functional and rational in the same time. This is not “luxury” but a basic need for the human soul, like air, water and food are necessities for the human body.
Dostojeski said : ” Beauty will save the world ”
– and what a contrast to the times we´re living in.
Yours
.oOo.