The Rise of West Lake: A Cultural Landmark in the Song Dynasty

Lovely West Lake, near scenic Hangzhou on China’s east coast, has been celebrated as a major tourist site since the twelfth century. Now as then, visitors boat to its islands, stroll through its gardens, worship in its temples, and immortalize it in poetry and painting. Hangzhou and West Lake have long served as icons of Chinese landscape appreciation, literary and artistic expression, and tourism.

In the first in-depth English-language study of this picturesque locale, Xiaolin Duan examines...