Orioles Singing in the Willows
Willow-fringed lakeside park built on a Southern Song imperial garden, later a Muslim graveyard rediscovered under the mud.
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About this audio guide
This guide to Orioles Singing in the Willows in Hangzhou uncovers three hundred years of history beneath this willow-lined shore of West Lake, from an 1162 imperial retirement garden built for an abdicated Song emperor to the Muslim graveyard that quietly took its place after the dynasty fell. You'll hear about Ding Henian, a scholar-poet tied to Hangzhou's Phoenix Mosque, and the merchants and clerics buried alongside him as their tombstones sank into the lake mud. By the Ming dynasty only a single bridge and pavilion still marked the site, before Kangxi ordered it rebuilt and named it Orioles Singing in the Willows in 1699.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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