Guest Post: The Great Story Behind West Lake China

July 5, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 6 Comments

Remember when I wrote that we visited during our city tour also the West Lake in Hangzhou? Today I have a guest post by Karenr Robinson giving a wonderful description of that area. Where I could only write about what I saw myself during that short rainy stop at the lake Karenr provides with this article a summary on what you can see there and how to experience it the best way.

China is a beautiful country that is blessed with plenty of tourist attractions. China have a lot of magnificent attractions to visit for the tourists including antique sites and relics, grand imperial palaces, stunning water towns, marvelous natural wonders, fabulous cultural heritage, and unique folk customs. West Lake is one of the most favored tourist attractions in China amid visitors and a plenty of tourists from around the world used to visit the lake every year.

Heaven on Earth

West Lake is a freshwater lake situated in Hangzhou, China. The lake is divided into five parts by three causeways. The visitors can observe temples, pagodas, gardens, and artificial islands within the lake. West Lake has persuaded many poets and painters right through Chinese history for its natural splendor and historic leftovers. The green leaves and flower blossoms make the lake a heaven on earth.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

West Lake was labeled as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. The Lake has influenced Chinese garden designers and also many other designers in other countries. West Lake is said to be the only lake heritage site in China. UNESCO mentioned that the lake was able to persuade garden design in the rest of China and some other countries including Japan and Korea over the centuries. The lake in fact reveals and romanticizes union between humans and nature.

Natural Scenery and Human Culture

West Lake is the most gorgeous attraction in Hangzhou and the lake itself is full of attractions. The lake is enclosed by hills on three sides. Numerous Chinese poets and artists have praised the lake for its perfection and amalgamation of spectacular natural scenery and human culture. Su Shi who is a prolific poet in the Song Dynasty compared West Lake to Xi Zi, the most gorgeous woman in ancient China.

Full of Attractions

West Lake is a man-made lake situated at the heart of the city alive with plenty of attractions Including gardens, pavilions, causeways, pagodas, temples, artificial islands and bridges. The entire lake is a fantastic place to spend time with your family, lover, and friends. Numerous temples, pagodas, gardens, and artificial islands seen within the lake make it an exemplary destination.

History & Facts

West Lake has a long history to tell and the original West Lake created more than 2000 years ago. It was formed with the sedimentation of the Qiantang River. It is considered that the lake was almost double compared to its present size during Tang Dynasty (618-907). The lake dried up around the middle of the Tang Dynasty by reason of negligence and poor management of the lake. Hence, a fresh dyke and dam structure was put up, causeways were made and the lake comprehensively developed.

The lake has a surface area of more or less 6 square kilometers. The length of the West Lake is approximately 15 kilometers. The par water profundity is just about 0.8 meters. The lake has the ability to hold up to 14,290,000 cubic meters of water. West Lake has its own dry land for the maintenance and repair of boats.

The West Lake has been a main tourist attraction in China for the past many years. With the incessant development, sharp maintenance and the formation of islands have guided the lake to become a most beautiful tourist attraction in China. The Three Pools Mirroring the Moon is the biggest island of the lake. Mid-Lake Pavilion is the oldest island of the West Lake. The lake is delimited on three sides by mountains and hills.

Best Seasons

The lake is best to visit during rainy days, sunny days, spring time or winter time. The main reason is that West Lake is always good-looking but in dissimilar forms. Each season has its own splendor but March to May used to experience huge rush in West Lake and it can be called as the best season to visit West Lake.

How to Explore the Complete Area of West Lake

The scenic West Lake has many little attractions spreading around the lake. You will require one or more days to see its complete attractions.

Walking

Walking around the lake will be a delightful experience for the travelers. Walking around the lake’s two causeways such as the Yang and the Su cause ways present you amazing views.

Riding a Bike

The finest means to travel the whole West Lake is riding a bike. Bike riding is fast than walking, and you will be able to cover the whole attraction within few hours. Another way travel on the lake is by boat.

Cruise Boat

Boat Cruise on West Lake will be a mesmerizing experience for the travelers and it offers you the chance to enjoy the lake’s stunning scenery. Gaily painted pleasure boats, motor-driven boats, and rowing boats are available here. Boat Cruise allows the tourists to travel the islets on West Lake including Three Ponds Mirroring the Moon.

Sightseeing Car

The tourists can find cars here for sightseeing and it is suitable for people to explore the lake in a short time. You can find a guide along with the car. The driver can also become your guide and will introduce you the sceneries.

Author Bio:

I Karenr Robinson and forming articles to sites and some other online areas are my scope of thought. My experience and authority must make sure helped for me to make scholarly assignments, for instance, paper on School-An essential unit of instructive change .I am sufficiently capable to apply my insight and set forward customers’ verity and certainties moved down articles and papers .I am a specialist in the field of best essay writing service. I am respected with amazing speculative data on the field I am capacity.

Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Our cute son

The Joy with dear Mother-in-law

July 3, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 35 Comments

It has been now roughly 4 weeks since my dear Chinese mother-in-law arrived here in Germany. In the beginning I mentioned that nothing bad or weird had happened thus far. You can imagine that it was an exception and that she returned to her good old self within no time. I guess it was like the jet lag affected her that she was not able to pull of any stunts the first week. So what has happened since then?

She is once again a world champion in leaving her oily handprints all over the apartment. The windows, the tv screen, the cabinets, the glass wall and door between dining room and living room, the bathroom mirror, all windows and doors of the new car, the aquarium and heck even on the tiles on the floor you can find some of them. I am not even kidding when I say that there is her facial imprint on the sun roof of the car! I surrendered long time ago in trying to clean up everything on a daily basis, now I let the madness just happen and wonder how bad it might all look like when she is leaving in two months. Over the years I wrote in a few posts about the stuff she had broken such as some bowls, the car safety belt or the toaster. Nothing major has happened yet except of a broken plate and few chipped bowls but it seems she is trying hard to scratch our glass table. Why she is trying her best? The thing is she hits her legs daily several times on that table because it is glass and I clean it making it look pretty neat. She is not the biggest fan of having a super clean glass table as according to her she can not see it and thus hits her legs. Not that she is openly scratching the table but I have seen and heard many time when she scrapped with some bowl over the surface…

Now to the weird things. She is back again being her weird self. Who broke the plate? It wasn’t her. Who ran against the glass door? It wasn’t her, and so on. Also she has a rather odd way of perceiving on what is good. For example she was urging my wife to find our lost Zwilling nailcutter because according it so much better than the old one we still have. I must add she has actually never used it. When my wife was asking her why and what is so much better about it she just replies something along these lines “The brand is good, it is expensive so of course it is better”. Same applies to everything she has never tried or used herself. If by any chance the brand is well-known it must be great just like the old Iphone 3 she has which is according to her so much better than her new Oppo F1 in every aspect. Now she is also very upset with my wife that she has never time to go shopping. You know my wife is the whole day busy with work and MIL does not compute that there is no real way around it to earn money. Besides she got a wicked fashion sense, most of her clothes will remind you of some Circus artists. Her goal is always to find something cheap, but good quality and fashionable, indeed this resulted that she never bought anything over the past years in Germany or Finland. Not anything? Okay that is not right as she once bought a jacket which she even tried on but was in the end way too small for her and bed sheets which did not fit at all either.

I could of course go on with my rambling but I will stop for now as there is just more and more coming to my mind as soon as I start writing. There will be more coming about her but not today, perhaps in another month in case I don’t go insane till then.

Will this crazyiness ever stop?

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Crazy Chinese People, Crazy Family, Mom in Law, Travels

At the Guangyun Lake

June 26, 2016 CrazyChineseFamily 19 Comments

We have been in Xi’an multiple times over the past years but somehow each time we find something new which we haven’t visited yet. One of those things was this time the site of the Xi’an International Horticultural Exposition 2011. Back then in 2011 we were also in China together with my parents and even had tickets for the Expo. However it was so hot during that time that we decided to skip it. Years passed by and we forgot about the expo and the still existing park. This all changed when my wife’s friend invited us to go there for the afternoon. I was ready for some intense walking around the huge area and taking tons of pictures. Yes I was ready but it all didn’t work out as I had hoped for.

Before we went to that huge park we were invited by the whole crazy family to go eating some buffet at the Shangri-La Hotel in Xi’an. Don’t understand me wrong it was pretty decent food there but nothing too extraordinary that I would write about it. Only three things are really worth mentioning from that time at the buffet. First my crazy Chinese mother-in-law was chasing behind Nathan to feed him around the playground next to the restaurant for several rounds. Not only once but multiple time. Second crazy Chinese Grandma ate two plates full of raw seafood. She never ate raw seafood before in her entire life and ended up few hours later very very sick at home. Third was a family with two children sitting next to us. The mother was one of the bit larger people out there, not that it would be worth mentioning at all but she had a very interesting taste in food. Each time she went to get some more sushi she took a tube of wasabi and ate it all, again and again and again. Okay that is all I have to mention about the buffet except of course that it took nearly three hours as all family members needed few breaks in order to eat as much as humanly possible. Due to this our trip to the Expo Site was delayed a lot.

hort9 — I couldn’t figure out how to reach that hut

My wife’s friend picked us up from the hotel a little after 3pm. With her she had her husband, baby, mother-in-law and nanny because you know it takes at least four people to handle a child in China. Once we arrived at the Expo we quickly realized that it would be impossible for us to cover the whole area as it was first of all too late and the area just too huge. We got ourselves tickets for the electrical mini busses driving through the main area. The bad thing was though that those busses only operated till 5pm meaning we had less than 1 1/2 hours time to cover at least a couple of things before leaving. While driving around you could see that they still put up a lot of effort to preserve the park however many sights were already closed and were slowly crumbling apart.

Our first stop was at a giant hall full of tropical and desert plants. The building was divided of course into two sections where the lower part was for the tropical plants and the upper area for the desert plants. It was very well made and I was surprised how on earth they got those giant trees there. Especially the rainforest part was interesting as it had all kinds of beautiful flowers around. Here I wanted to take many more pictures but the high humidity wasn’t the best friend of my camera lenses…

After this we went to the animal section. I must say it was very sad to see how the animals were kept and I did not even take pictures of it. All in all it just looked terrible. The only part of the animals section where I took pictures was the peacock enclosure. It was full of male peacocks and upon entering the staff gave us dried corn to feed the birds. Those peacocks certainly went crazy showing off and we were surrounded by an ocean of colourful feathers. In fact there were so many that my wife got scared, okay she gets scared by all animals when they get too close…

Sad to say but those were the only two locations we managed to visit. While driving around the park we saw so many locations with certain themes such as European Village, Chinese Monuments etc. All over the park they had those Wedding Photoshoots and their staff carrying tons of different dresses around. We also saw the Chang’an Tower(长安塔) which is one of the main sights of the park. However we could not enter it due to one important reason, it never passed the safety test and thus was and perhaps will never be opened to the public…