After my visit to Shenzhen, I decided to tour Hangzhou/West Lake for a couple of days. Where as Shenzhen is a newly developed metropolis, with record breaking high-rises, Hangzhou has only recently started to develop vertically. The city still has a good mix of modern and historical (now tourism-related) architectures.
The train ticket from Shanghai to Hangzhou was 54Y. That is the equivalent of $8, or 5+ local lunches or 2 Micky D's. The train ride was around 1.5hrs in a clean, fast, smooth cabin. The difference between SH and HZ is like that of metropolis and large oasis, though HZ is expanding rapidly in its new city on the other riverbank. Even by local standards, this price for the train ticket is a great deal!
While in HZ I had a pleasant stay at west lake hostel, and toured the beautiful West Lake and its metropolitan city core. It was refreshing that HZ had a much better air quality (opaque blue) than the larger metropolises; unfortunately I was not alone in that discovery.
The visit got me thinking about the dichotomies of City and Garden (referring specifically to XiHu/west lake and SH). The simple comparison is between the City as a modern, routine, and polluted commercial and residential center and the Garden as a traditional, serene, and quiet natural retreat. In this comparison, physical and psychological distance plays a large role in nurturing the distinctions between the two archetypes.
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