Wuyun Mountain

This guide to Wuyun Mountain above Hangzhou's West Lake starts among its tea terraces, where pickers still work by hand and where one of the four classic grades of Longjing tea, named Cloud after this peak, was once judged rather than sold at market. You'll hear how the mountain got its own name, from five-colored clouds said to gather at its summit, and follow the climb past the terraces to the ruins of Zhenji Temple, raised more than a thousand years ago during the chaotic Five Dynasties period. The guide lingers on what still stands at the top, a temple witness older than the temple itself. Take the terraced path up slowly, the way the pickers do each spring.