Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Don't Miss
Chinese Sex Culture Museum
This private museum, located east of Tuisi Garden in Hangzhou, is quietly housed in
a historic but disused girls' school campus and you won't miss it. If you thought Con-
fucius was a prude, think again.
NEED TO KNOW
Zhonghua Xingwenhua Bowuguan; admission ¥20; 9am-5.30pm
Hangzhou
0571 / POP 6.16 MILLION
One of China's most illustrious tourist drawcards, Hangzhou's dreamy West
Lake panoramas and fabulously green and hilly environs can easily lull you in-
to long sojourns. Eulogised by poets and applauded by emperors, the lake has
intoxicated the Chinese imagination for aeons.
History
Hangzhou's history dates back to the start of the Qin dynasty (221 BC). Marco
Polo passed through in the 13th century, calling Hangzhou Kinsai and noting
in astonishment that Hangzhou had a circumference of 100 miles, its waters
vaulted by 12,000 bridges.
Hangzhou flourished after being linked with the Grand Canal in AD 610 but
fully prospered after the Song dynasty was overthrown by the invading
Jurchen, who captured the Song capital Kaifeng, along with the emperor and
the leaders of the imperial court, in 1126. The remnants of the Song court fled
south, finally settling in Hangzhou and establishing it as the capital of the
Southern Song dynasty. Hangzhou's wooden buildings made fire a perennial
hazard; among major conflagrations, the great fire of 1237 reduced some
30,000 residences to piles of smoking carbon.
With 10 city gates by Ming times, Hangzhou took a hammering from Taiping
rebels, who besieged the city in 1861 and captured it; two years later the im-
perial armies reclaimed it.
