About Hangzhou
Marco Polo once famously said ‘In the sky there is heaven, and on the Earth there is Suzhou and Hangzhou’.
Hangzhou is located in Eastern China’s Zhejiang Province. As a city of 8.5 million people, it is a medium sized city by Chinese standards. Just 45 minutes away from Shanghai by high speed train it has the feel of a dynamic, international city but is small enough to retain a lot of its original culture. It has all the necessary facilities and amenities so teachers coming to Hangzhou will be able to experience “real” China whilst maintaining the comfortable lifestyle which they were used to at home. There is a vibrant ex-pat community with many organized events and nights, for example, a weekly trivia/quiz night, an Ultimate Frisbee club, hiking and biking events and many more. There are also several ex-pat bars where you can meet like minded people and make plenty of new friends.
Many people regard Hangzhou as being ‘the most beautiful city in China’. The city has been built around the ‘West Lake’, or ‘Xihu’ in Chinese, a recently approved UNESCO site of beauty, historical and cultural interest. This is a large, man-made lake in the centre of the city. It’s surrounded on three sides by easily accessible mountains (perfect for hiking, biking and painting) and on the other by the sky scrapers of the city’s CBD. The lake is the perfect place to relax and un-wind in the centre of the city; it has many traditional causeways, pagodas, cafes, grassy areas and nature. Hangzhou also has numerous tea plantations where you can sit in cafes or at people’s houses, drink tea and watch the world go by. There are also plenty of pagodas and temples to visit which make interesting tourist attractions.
Hangzhou has great transport links, both within the city through numerous taxis, great bus routes, a soon to be finished subway and the biggest network of public bikes in the world (for the Brits – think “Boris bikes” on a much larger scale!). It also has extensive public transport links to the rest of China through the international airport, three train stations and four bus stations, perfect for weekend/holiday travelling to cities such as Nanjing or the traditional water towns of Xitang and Wuzhen.