銭塘江遊覧船

A Qiantang River cruise offers visitors to Hangzhou a way to see the city and its great river from a perspective that the lake and the canals cannot provide. While West Lake shows the city's quieter, more poetic face, the Qiantang is the working waterway that has shaped Hangzhou's history and that carries the dramatic tides for which the river is famous across China.

The Qiantang is best known for its tidal bore, the remarkable wall of water that rushes up the funnel-shaped estuary at certain times of year and draws enormous crowds of spectators to its banks. A cruise on the river lets visitors experience the scale of the waterway that produces this phenomenon, taking in the width of the channel, the engineered embankments, and the relationship between the city's modern skyline and the water.

The riverfront has been reshaped in recent years into a major public space, and a boat provides one of the best angles from which to read the new skyline of Hangzhou. After dark, when the buildings along the banks light up, a river cruise becomes a moving, front-row view of the illuminated city, with the towers and bridges reflected in the dark water.

Because the river carries a different character from the gentle lake, a cruise here complements rather than duplicates a visit to West Lake. The sense of a working estuary, the wide horizons, and the possibility of witnessing the tidal phenomena all give the Qiantang an identity of its own.

For travelers wanting to round out their picture of Hangzhou beyond its lake, a Qiantang River cruise offers the city's other great waterborne experience, a perspective on the working river that has defined the city as clearly as West Lake has defined its poetry.