Su Dongpo, a celebrated poet of the Song Dynasty, likened the lake to Xizi -- the most beautiful woman in ancient China. He wrote: "Ripping water shimmering on sunny day,/Misty mountains shrouded the rain;/Plain or gaily decked out like Xizi;/The West Lake is always alluring."

These poetic sentiments leave no doubt of the glory of the scenery that inspired the poet. Therefore, the lake also became known as Xizi Lake.

Despite its beautiful name, for a long period of time, the West Lake was nothing but a natural reservoir that provided water for irrigating farmland. This fact was found in a poem written by Bai Juyi of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) for the local people upon leaving Hangzhou after his tenure as a local official had expired: "As I bid farewell to you all,/I have nothing but to leave behind a lake full of water/ In case you come across a year of crop failure."

The West Lake became a famed scenic place in China only after it was repeatedly dredged and developed by people from various dynasties, especially after it was protected, developed and eulogized by Bai Juyi and Su Dongpo.

In the last decade, quite a few new attractions have been added to West Lake, such as the Chinese Tea Museum, the China Silk Museum, the Huqing Yutang Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Museum of the Southern-Song Official Porcelain Kilns, as well as a dozen or so memorial halls, old residences and tombs of such famous people as Su Dongpo, Gong Zhizhen, Yu Qian, Zhang Taiyan, Pan Tianshou and Huang Binong. Three or five days are barely enough to cover all of the places of interest West Lake has to offer.

For those who know something about Chinese culture, the West Lake is something of a dream. Apart from its dream-like beauty, the West Lake is also associated with so many other dream-like tales, such as the well-known "the Tale of the White Snake," "the Butterfly Lovers," legends about Lord Ji, the story of Li Huiniang, as well as legends about such famous men of letters as Ge Hong, Lin Hejing, and Wu Changshuo . It is just as Yu Qiuyu, a well-known prose writer, had said: "The West Lake is a lake that belongs to culture".

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