Quyuan Fenghe
Historic imperial-era brewery turned lotus pond garden, its name marking a mistaken emperor's brushstroke.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Quyuan Fenghe in Hangzhou opens on West Lake in 1699, when the emperor Kangxi lifted his brush to name a shoreline that had actually been a busy imperial wine distillery, its vats of fermenting rice set right beside a lotus pond. You'll hear what the neighborhood was really called before his visit, and how one brushstroke rewrote its identity in the official record. Decades later, his grandson Qianlong visited the same stone tablet and noticed something was off. Roughly forty acres of lotus ponds now cover most of the old distillery grounds.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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