杭州
UNESCO West Lake with the Tang-era causeways, Lingyin Buddhist Temple, Longjing tea villages, the Grand Canal northern terminus, and easy day trips to Wuzhen water town. Heaven on earth — West Lake, Longjing tea, Lingyin Temple. Below are the 23places we've vetted for foreign visitors — explore them on the interactive map above, or open any one for hours, ticket prices, English-service notes, and how to get there.
UNESCO scenic lake (2011 inscription) — the central reason most foreigners visit Hangzhou. Free, 15 km perimeter, walkable or bike-able.
326 CE active Chan Buddhist monastery — one of China's largest and most important. Adjacent Feilai Feng has 470 Tang-Yuan rock carvings.
1848 lakeside restaurant on Solitary Hill — Hangzhou cuisine's most iconic brand. West Lake Beggar's Chicken + Dongpo Pork are the signatures.
'Give me one day, I'll give you back a thousand years' — China's largest Song dynasty theme park. The 70-min Romance Show is the country's most-attended live show.
2.8 km willow + peach tree causeway built by Su Dongpo (1089) — UNESCO heritage walking path with six humped bridges.
North-shore bridge where the White Snake folktale set the lovers' first meeting — also the Lingering Snow on Broken Bridge UNESCO scene.
1300-year-old Jiangnan water town — black-tile-and-white-wall canal houses, hosts the annual World Internet Conference. The Venice of southern China.
South-shore pagoda — original Tang-era pagoda destroyed 1924 + rebuilt 2002. The Legend of the White Snake is set here.
West Lake's most iconic island — three small stone pagodas in the lake form the image on the back of the ¥1 note. 'Ten Scenes of West Lake' #5.
Hangzhou's most-prestigious green tea village — terraced fields southwest of West Lake. Pick-your-own + tea tastings April-May.
335 Buddhist rock carvings (5th-14th c.) across a limestone cliff next to Lingyin Temple — China's most concentrated southern Buddhist sculpture site.
Qing-dynasty Hangzhou commercial street — restored 2002 as a pedestrian zone with traditional shops, dragon-beard candy, silk.
UNESCO World Heritage (2019) Neolithic city — 5000-year-old jade ritual culture that rewrote the timeline of Chinese civilization. Free.
70 km² wetland just west of West Lake — boat rides through bamboo + persimmon-lined waterways. The 'second West Lake' for foreigners.
1078-island man-made lake created 1959 — boat tours, mountain biking, the source of Nongfu Spring bottled water. UNESCO Biosphere candidate.
China's only national-level tea museum — tea production history, regional tea types, tea ceremony performances. Free.
Tomb + memorial of Song dynasty patriot-general Yue Fei (1103-1142). Four iron kneeling statues of his accusers still face the tomb — visitors traditionally spit on them.
Tea-village stream hike south of West Lake — 5 km gentle gradient through Longjing tea hills, with stream crossings and tea-tasting villages. Free.
Wushan hill viewpoint south of West Lake — Chenghuang Pavilion gives a panorama of the lake + Qiantang River + old town.
Jiangnan water town 100 km from Hangzhou — Mission Impossible III filming location, 1km of unique covered walkway, more authentic than Wuzhen.
970 CE Northern Song-era 13-story brick + wood pagoda overlooking the Qiantang River — built to control the river's famous tidal bore.
Southern terminus of the 1794 km Grand Canal — UNESCO inscribed 2014. Gongchen Bridge is the 'Mile Zero' Ming-era stone bridge.
Wang Shu's Pritzker-laureate (2012) sustainable campus — 22 buildings made of recycled bricks and tiles from demolished Chinese villages.
Step-by-step deep dives covering the questions every foreign visitor asks before flying in.
Set up Alipay in China with your own Visa or Mastercard — no Chinese bank needed. Tour Pass vs full Alipay, top-up tricks, daily limits, and where foreign cards still fail (2026).
Plain-English 2026 guide to China's 240-hour visa-free transit (TWOV) — the 55 eligible countries, which 65 ports accept it, the 24 provinces you can roam, what an onward ticket really means, and the mistakes that get tourists turned away.
Honest 2026 guide to staying online in China as a foreign tourist — which apps are blocked, which VPNs still work behind the Great Firewall, and why an international-roaming eSIM is the lower-stress alternative.
Google Maps in China is broken by design — your blue dot lands 500m off, transit fails, no Street View. Here's the 2026 setup with AMap, Apple Maps, and Maps.me offline.
Visa, vaccinations, VPN, Alipay, SIM, banking — the ordered 30-day timeline so you don't show up at the airport unprepared. Tested by hundreds of first-time travelers.
WeChat Pay accepts foreign Visa, Mastercard, Amex since 2024 — but should you use it instead of Alipay? Side-by-side comparison plus 5-minute setup for tourists in China.
Welcome to Hangzhou — Marco Polo called it 'the finest and noblest in the world' in 1290, and West Lake's 1,000-year-old causeways still inspire every Chinese landscape painting you've ever seen. Drink Longjing tea picked from the same hillside gardens that supplied the Song emperor. The world's longest canal ends here. The world's biggest tea-and-monks tradition started here.