Fans of Slender West Lake in Yangzhou will be delighted that the area’s popular evening tour returns tonight, as a Chinese New Year holiday draw sure to bring the pleasure seekers. Just wrap up warm; it’s going to be cold!
First launched in the summer of 2021, the tour of the Lake, featuring striking illumination of the area’s most popular draws, was an immediate hit with locals and visitors to the city of Yangzhou alike.
During the tour, the Lake’s beautiful scenery becomes a backdrop of visual effects for performances based on Tang Dynasty poetry, considered by many to be among the greatest in all of Chinese history.
This time around, the immersive-night tour shall be running each evening, between 17:30 and 21:30, from tonight until 6 February. Admission is ¥120 per person, with half price for those aged 6-18 or 60-69. Seniors over 70 and children under 6 qualify for free admission, as Jiangsu Now reports.
Those tempted by the tour as a distraction for one evening this week will be well advised to check the weather forecast before descending upon the scenic area. At time of writing, temperatures around Yangzhou Slender West Lake were forecast to remain below zero degrees Celsius for the duration of the tour.
Awarded as a National 5A Tourist Attraction in 2010, Yangzhou Slender West Lake became well known for its scenic spots during Emperor Qianlong’s reign of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 CE).
Best known of all is 24 Bridge, named as a nod to its 24 parapets and 24 steps. The Five Pavillion Bridge (pictured), likewise, needs no further introduction, as this publication discovered during a weekend escape to Slender West Lake.
Among the other scenic spots, tombs for a variety of other emperors, plus the White Lamaist Pagoda, a 28.5-metre-high structure, built, it is said, overnight, in 1784, to welcome an inspection tour by Emperor Qianlong. The structure, that is also reminiscent of the White Pagoda in Beijing’s Beihai Park, gives away its Islamic religious influence through architecture more akin to that found in China’s far west.
Emperor Qianlong was so impressed with his visits to Yangzhou that he declared it a favourite retreat, endowing the city with stipend after stipend on account of his luck fishing in Slender West Lake. Little did he know, the best local underwater swimmers had been recruited to dive beneath the Emperor’s boat and impale fish on to his hooks.
Yangzhou Slender West Lake is just 1 and a half hours’ drive from Nanjing, or 40 minutes on the train, followed by a 10-minute taxi ride, and still within our own Jiangsu Province.
