Le Tombeau de Xiao Xiao

The last time I had gone to West Lake, I was in a rather artistic phase. I would have loved to have sat down under the shade of a weeping willow and sketched for an entire afternoon. Unfortunately, I was with a group and had to keep an average speed of two footsteps per second. Beside, the day was too hot and I had not brought my sketchbook. In fact, I didn't even bring my camera.

A week later, or rather a couple of days ago, I had a free afternoon and no desire to spend it asleep in my dorm room. Deciding to brave the afternoon sun, I hopped on a taxi to the lake, armed with umbrella, camera, and sketchbook.

When I arrived at the lake, I was greeted with a mild breeze and a breath of fresh air. After a few minutes during which I traipsed around marveling at local leaves and my luck, I looked up in the sky to see angry storm clouds looming in the near future. No matter, plenty of pavilions about.

There was a floating pavilion just off the crop of this picture, which is completely unattached from land and required a large leap to get on to. It came in handy later.

Parts of the lake were completely covered with lily pads.

The flora around the lake could have kept my pencil busy for the entire afternoon. However (mostly because of the ticking forecast), I took the shortcut and photographs of foliage instead. I followed trefoiled, serrated, veined, (a)symmetrical, recursive leaves in more shades of green than I could count into the following cursive clearing:


There, a cat took one glinting glance at me and dove into the trefoiled, serrated recursion. A small French girl (in yet another shade of green) followed her babbling, bell-like voice (une belle voix) and her Chinese caretaker into the concrete clearing. I could not resist calling out "Regarde, il y a un petit chat la-bas". Although she showed no surprise in hearing French from a complete stranger, she did stop in her tracks en cherchant le petit chat stopped in its tracks beneath the foliage.

I meandered for a while longer around the lake, snapping some more shots, before deciding that it's about time I head back. Attempting to figure out my location, I looked to a guidepost.

Statues for the "wine culture" of China or something.

I liked the juxtaposition of the old world boats in the foreground and the modern high rises in the background.

Some cosplayers! The finger in the corner is from my hurry to take their picture rapidly without them noticing.

Wait a minute... What was that at the very bottom? Rain or no rain. I had to find this place. I passed a statue (with which I had to take an irreverent photo), a pavilion (named for Qiu Jin's last words. Remember her from Chinese class, Lily and Scot?), and the tomb of a man who killed a tiger with his bare hands (he did other things, but that's all I could remember from that TV show) before I saw it in the midst of a large crowd of people at the end of the long, winding path. Apparently, some middle school children had a field trip that day and had used it as a landmark for rendezvous.

Irreverent statue photo #20

Wind Rain Pavilion and wind rain in the distance.

Wusong's tomb.

Xiao Xiao's tomb is a rather popular attraction.

Self-explanatory.

Satisfied with seeing the sepulchre of my delightful, dead doppelganger, I headed back to the place I entered the park and unsuccessfully attempted to hail a taxi back before the rage d'orage. Thus, I retreated back into the park and settled in the first, floating pavilion minutes before the downpour, where I traced patterns of the elegant woodwork tracery in my sketchbook while listening to rain drop like beads into floating lily pads.