Words Fail Me

Broken Bridge is part of one of the two narrow causeways which cross the West Lake.  They are packed with pedestrians, cyclists, and electric carts.

Hangzhou’s famous “Broken Bridge” is so named because snow in the middle melts first, darkening the stone and making it look like there’s a gap.  

I’d rather have a woke town.  Right?  Right?  Tip your waitresses.

On my way back from Chongqing, I spent a few days in a place I’ve been trying to get to for some time now:  Hangzhou.
Just an hour’s train ride away from Shanghai, Hangzhou has been a place of beauty and relaxation as far back as at least the Tang dynasty.   The focus of the city is 西湖 (Xīhú which means “West Lake.”)
The north shore of the lake is lined with villas built in the 20s and 30s, some converted into cafés and boutiques now.  The city feels like an affluent resort town.  (If resort towns had 9 million permanent residents.) My room at the Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale was not nearly as fancy as the overwrought name of the hotel, but it was nice and right at the northwest corner of the lake.

The Chongqing Guotai Grand Theatre building has a cool design using a lattice of beams whose ends look like Chinese seals.

This huge video screen wrapped around the edge of the building.  Some ads used the angled edge as a design element — like a sidebar — whereas other ads like this one just treated it as an entire screen.

This woman was walking around the street, selling scrawny chickens dangling from a stick.  Ah, China.

Towering over People’s Square is a huge auditorium called the Great Hall of the People.
The architecture was inspired by Beijing’s Temple of Heaven.It’s so photogenic, I had trouble finding a bad angle.

Chongqing is known at “The Mountain City” and (as my calves can testify) sits atop a hilly peninsula.  It reminded me a bit of San Francisco in that respect.  Along with Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin it is one of China’s four direct controlled municipalities.