Carved cliffs
From centuries of quarrying.
猫猫的日记本 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Logan Wenger — CC BY 2.0 · Zhang Qi — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Logan Wenger — CC BY 2.0 · Sekino Tadashi — Public domain · Sekino Tadashi — Public domain · Logan Wenger — CC BY 2.0
A lake made by people without meaning to: the site was once a hill of blue stone that quarrymen began cutting in the Han dynasty and worked harder in the Sui dynasty to build the city wall, and after centuries of cutting only sheer cliffs and deep pools remained, with half the hill gone. In the late Qing dynasty a Shaoxing notable, Tao Junxuan, turned the quarry into a garden inspired by the poet Tao Yuanming's «Peach Blossom Spring», building a long dyke to separate the lake from the canal, and today it is counted with Hangzhou's West Lake and Jiaxing's South Lake among the three best-known lakes of Zhejiang province. Narrow black-awning boats, some of them paddled by boatmen using their feet, glide beneath the cliffs and slip into caves cut in the rock, the best known being the Xiantao and Laba caves, where passengers look up at the sky through a narrow opening as if from the bottom of a well, while old stone bridges, pavilions and walkways link the shores. Tickets cost CNY 50, or CNY 25 concession, and it opens from 8:00 to 17:00, per visitor guides, while boat rides are paid separately. The calm morning, when the cliffs are mirrored in the water, is the loveliest time.
From centuries of quarrying.
By boat.
Some paddled by foot.
Gaobu Town, Yuecheng District, east Shaoxing
Tickets are CNY 50, or CNY 25 concession, and it opens from 8:00 to 17:00, while boat rides into the caves are paid separately, per visitor guides.