Hangzhou 杭州

There are many beautiful canal towns ending in "zhou" (州), in Zhejiang, the province next to Shanghai, of which I have visited two (the post about Yangzhou is here).
      I almost didn't get to see Hangzhou because I nearly ran out of time. I avoided it earlier in my trip, because as the capital city of the Zhejiang province, and attracts a lot of tourists to its large West Lake, so it can get quite crowded. But I figured, by late November time, it must be quieter, but the weather was still sunny, so I hopped on a bullet train with Jing, my labmate, early one morning to take a look at what all the fuss was about. 
      We mainly spent most of our time around the famous West Lake (西湖), which was very pretty and definitely seemed deserving of its UNESCO World Heritage Site title. What surprised me is that it was much bigger than I expected. It takes between one to two hours to drive from one end to another! I naively assumed that we could just get off at the metro station (for Hangzhou is important enough for an extensive metro network to be planned, of which one line is already complete, and conveniently takes people from the futuristic-looking Hangzhou East railway station to very near the West Lake), and walk around to the silk museum which I was interested in visiting. I think that would have taken all day! We did start off with a stroll though, and saw some beautiful sights. I have to say a proviso here, the photos in this post are of much better quality than my usual standard on account of having borrowed YZ's Nikon dSLR for the day. It was so great and I was able to take the photos I always wanted!
There was a fountain show starting just as we got to the lake:

Fantastic fountain show at the east end of the West Lake

This fountain show went on for about 15 minutes and came back every now and then later. We spent some time watching it and got lucky in catching this rainbow in it.

Jing (静) walking along the West Lake (西湖)

Jing and I had a great stroll along the side before deciding to go to Hefang Street for lunch, which had its usual busy shops selling nick-nacks.

Hefang Street

and we also saw a brilliant sugar artist who had many crowded around him, admiring his handiwork:

Pouring a sugar dragon

This is quite a common sight to see around markets in China, where different animals from the Chinese Zodiac calendar are poured free hand and when its finished, mounted onto a stick to make a beautiful candy lolly. I'm supposed to have the ox (牛), from the year I was born, but I think that dragons are much more beautiful!
After a taxi ride towards the silk museum, we had a short walk near the lake again, where we saw some lovely sites.

We made it to the Silk Factory, which had a beautiful sculpture in the front entrance.

Entrance to the Hangzhou Silk Museum

Even though part of the museum was closed for refurbishments, it was still a very educational and informative museum. I was mainly interested from a biological point of view, and I got the answers to all my questions such as where does the silk come out from? (apparently it's the caterpillar's mouths) and how do they unravel the silk strands from the cocoons? (it's slightly unsavory - they dip the cocoons into boiling water to kill the chrysalis and then stir the mixture with bamboo sticks until the end of the strand comes loose!). The rest of the museum allowed you to see all the stages of silk production, going through the process of transforming the raw silk strands into fabric by weaving, including an impressive array of old looms.

Old silk loom at Hangzhou Silk Museum

This was followed by different dyeing or decoration techniques, including charting the historical progress of natural dyes and traditional embroidery.

Silk sheets dyed with natural dyes hanging from the ceiling of the museum

There were a range of different buildings housing different aspects of silk production and decoration. There is also a building housing the live moths and caterpillars that create the beautiful fabric, but unfortunately it's only open to the public during May, when the mulberry leaves are in season and the caterpillars can be fed. They did have a few pretty bonsai trees in the garden though

Bonsai trees in the garden of the Hangzhou silk museum

Afterwards, we went to Zhejiang University (浙江大学), which is one of the most famous universities in China, and is known as the "Cambridge of the East". We went to the Yuquan campus, which houses the famous statue of Mao, who looks over the campus park.

Mao statue looking over park at Zhejiang University, Yuquan campus

Mao statue at Zhejiang University, Yuquan campus

 It is also very leafy and makes for a pleasant stroll.

The leafy streets of Zhejiang University at Yuquan campus

Some of the most beautiful buildings are at the Zhijiang campus, but unfortunately, it was a two hour bus ride away, south-west of the lake, so we just simply didn't have the time to get there!
But alas it was soon time to go, so we just took one more stroll around the West Lake and caught the sunset there before heading home.

Taking in the view at the West Lake (西湖)

Sunset on West Lake (西湖)

Sunset on West Lake (西湖)

Futuristic-looking Hangzhou East railway station

Generally Hangzhou was very pretty, and I underestimated the size. Whenever I mentioned that I was going or had been, people asked me if I spent one or two days there, and I naively assumed that one would be enough, but probably people are right, it would be better to spend two days there. Simply because of the size, we spent a lot of time travelling around to different places. Having said that, the taxis were reasonable and the buses were extremely cheap (only 1 or 1.5 RMB per journey). I had wanted to visit the ancient temple of Fei Lai Feng, where statues of Buddha were carved into the rock and cave walls there, however we were put off by the distance, as it is a fair way from the West Lake, and at 150 RMB entrance fee, it was a bit steep. However, the Baochu pagoda would also have been nice to see if we had had more time, which is an old tower that is said to have great views of Hangzhou.
Overall, it was a nice trip out, and I didn't get bothered too much by people who'd never seen a wàiguó rén (外国人) before, but Jing told me that I got many comments about my height, as the average height of people in Hangzhou seemed to be significantly shorter than in Shanghai! 
Have you been to Hangzhou? What did you think of it?