苏堤
Willow and peach-lined causeway built from dredged lake silt, crossed by six arched stone bridges.
This guide to Su Causeway in Hangzhou opens in 1090, when the governor Su Shi, better known by his pen name Su Dongpo, found the lake beside it choked with weeds and swinging between flood and drought. Unable to get funding for dredging, he sold a hundred Buddhist ordination certificates to pay for an army of laborers, some accounts say over two hundred thousand of them, to haul silt from the bottom. It follows what they built from all that mud: a causeway lined with willows and peach trees, crossed by six stone bridges. Walk it in spring and listen for the argument Su Shi had to make before anyone agreed to dig.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.