“The mountain is called Tianzhu where lush forests dominate; the river is named Qiantang where emerald-green water flows.” Hangzhou is the misty, rainy Jiangnan mentioned repeatedly in poems. It was in Hangzhou that Bai Juyi lay back against a pillow in a county pavilion to watch the tidal bore of Qiantang River; it was in Hangzhou that Lu You spent the night listening to the spring rain all night in a small building in a deep alley; it was the West Lake’s glistening waters and its misty surrounding mountains that came to the eyes of Su Shi, drowsy from drink; it was the sight of a lilac-like girl walking down an alley in Hangzhou with an oil-paper umbrella that imprinted itself in Dai Wangshu’s memory ...

Hangzhou is the widely-known birthplace of legends. The White Snake and Xu Xian met for the first time on the Broken Bridge, and wrote the final chapter of the legend at Leifeng Pagoda; Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the Butterfly Lovers, studied together for three years in Wansong Academy and bid each other an unwilling farewell on the Long Bridge; Emperor Qianlong, of his six inspection trips to the south, visited Hangzhou four times when he bestowed Longjing Tea the title of “Imperial Tea”, wrote the inscriptions of “Feng Yue Wu Bian (literal meaning: The wonders of natural beauty are boundless)” and “Yunlin Zen Temple”...