China Journal #4 - Hefangjie Street(河坊街), Hangzhou

Hefangjie(河坊街) is a pedestrian street in the beautiful city of Hangzhou, near the southeastern part of the West lake.  Hefangjie is s street rebuilt in the historical style to reflect the traditional ways of life when Hangzhou was the capital of Southern Song dynasty.  The street has a rich collection of tea houses, restaurants, arts and crafts shops, traditional herbal medicine shops and more.

The taxi dropped us off at the eastern entrance of the street. The transformation from a chaotic traffic scene of the city into a relaxing pedestrian street is immediate.  Traditional red lanterns hang overhead along the entire street.  At night, these lanterns are lit to provide both illumination and a soft ambiance to the street.  The buildings have wooden doors and walls with intricate patterns reminiscent of old China.  the street is wide and paved with natural stone.  The place is very clean, though you can not escape the omnipresent smokers in China.

In the middle of the street are kiosks of various arts and crafts - glass blowers making intricate designs of teapots, dragons or ships; musicians playing instruments together; a craftsman blowing air into warm sugar dough while molding it into different figurines.  Along both sides of the street are various shops.  One of the most popular tea houses features half a dozen young men dressed in Song style clothing.  One of them twirls a teapot with a 5-foot spout like a baton - under arms, behind the back, over the head - and then pours tea from it into a cup placed on a table.  The street also features one of the oldest herbal medicinal pharmacies.  Its whitewashed wall with huge black engraved characters stands prominently though the fragrant herbal aroma also announces its presence unmistakably.

Parallel to this street is the well-known "gourmet street" of Hefangjie.  Well-known because everyone we talked to referred to this area as the "gourmet city", though we somehow found only half a dozen restaurants on the first night.  Fortunately, the restaurant we picked had both good food and service, and the seats offered a street view from the second floor.  We did realized when we returned the next day, that the "gourmet street" was one street over, on the opposite of the direction we picked to explore the night before.

For anyone who travels to Hangzhou for the first time, I would highly recommend making a half day stop here at Hefangjie and take a leisurely walk down the street and enjoy a hearty meal at one of the dozens of restaurants on gourmet street.  Though it appears to be a big tourist attraction, the quality of food was superb and price was very reasonable on "gourmet street".