As you can see in this picture, the bottom of the pagoda now has elevators that go up into it, and is quite modern

Inside the bottom of the pagoda are the ruins of the original pagoda

Going up the escalator

The leifung pagoda, the only pagoda with an escalator on the outside and an elevator inside.  It’s actually been rebuilt on top of the ruins of the original pagoda.

This was a cool boat I saw going across the lake

There were actually a lot more turtles than I thought, in the water.

Here’s the stand where you could buy your turtle.  Love how you can buy anything - even good karma.

There was a pond by leifung pagoda - you could buy a turtle to release into the pond here for karma as you’d be saving a life for anything bad you’ve done.

Nice restaurant

As the sun went down, the boats came in.  Here, you can see where a lot of the boats were docked and with the light it made the scene look very serene

a lot of people were eating this black (or blue?) corn so I had to get one.  It was….dry and was not really any different than normal yellow corn except that it was weird to look at while eating.

One of the many bridges

Nice flowers and scenery really did surround the lake

There are also some nice little islands in the lake

On one side of the lake (across the water in this picture) you can see the modern city of Hangzhou - which has been voted China’s best tourism city