Hangzhou city - China

Hangzhou (Chinese: 杭州; pinyin: Hángzhōu; Wade-Giles: Hangchow; Postal map spelling: Hangchow) is a sub-provincial city located in the Yangtze River Delta in the People's Republic of China, and the capital of Zhejiang (浙江) province. Located 180 kilometres (112 mi) southwest of Shanghai, as of 2004 the entire Hangzhou Region ("shì", 杭州市) or Prefecture-level city had a registered population of 6.4 million people. The Urban agglomeration of the Hangzhou metropolitan area (杭州市区) has a resident population of 3.9319 million as of 2003, of which 2.6367 million are permanent residents. There are 1.91 million residents in the six urban core districts.
As one of the most renowned and prosperous cities of China for much of the last 1,000 years, Hangzhou is also well-known for its beautiful natural scenery, with the West Lake (Xī Hú, 西湖) as the most well-known location. One of the seven capitals of ancient China, Hangzhou is an ancient cultural city and a well-known tourist city. It is most famous for the beautiful scenery of the West Lake. With an area of 6,047 square miles inhabited by a population of 5.2 million, it embraces six urban districts and seven suburban counties, namely Yuhang, Xiaoshan, Fuyang, Tonglu, Lin'an, Jiande and Chun'an. The Fuchun and Xin'an rivers and Thousand Island Lake are national scenic areas. In the 13th century, Marco Polo praised Hangzhou as the most beautiful city in the world. Hangzhou is also famous for its silk and tea products.
Hangzhou was chosen as the new capital of the Southern Song Dynasty when they regrouped after their defeat at the hands of the Jin in 1123. It remained the capital from the early 12th century until the Mongol invasion of 1276, and was known as Lin'an (臨安). It served as the seat of the imperial government, a center of trade and entertainment, and the nexus of the main branches of the civil service. During that time, the city was a sort of gravitational center of Chinese civilization: what used to be considered "central China" in the north was taken by the Jin, an ethnic minority dynasty ruled by Jurchens.
Numerous philosophers, politicians, and men of literature, including some of the most celebrated poets in Chinese history such as Su Shi (苏轼), Lu You (陆游), and Xin Qiji (辛弃疾) came here to live and die. Hangzhou is also the birthplace and final resting place of the scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095 AD), his tomb being located in the Yuhang district.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, commercial expansion, an influx of refugees from the conquered north, and the growth of the official and military establishments, led to a corresponding population increase and the city developed well outside its 9th century ramparts. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Hangzhou had a population of over 2 million at that time, while historian Jacques Gernet has estimated that the population of Hangzhou numbered well over one million by 1276. (Official Chinese census figures from the year 1270 listed some 186,330 families in residence and probably failed to count non-residents and soldiers.) It is believed that Hangzhou was the largest city in the world from 1180 to 1315 and from 1348 to 1358.
Lakeside Buildings on the West LakeBecause of the large population and densely-crowded (often multi-story) wooden buildings, Hangzhou was particularly vulnerable to fires. Major conflagrations destroyed large sections of the city in 1132, 1137, 1208, 1229, 1237, and 1275 while smaller fires occurred nearly every year. The 1237 fire alone was recorded to have destroyed 30,000 dwellings. To combat this threat, the government established an elaborate system for fighting fires, erected watchtowers, devised a system of lantern and flag signals to identify the source of the flames and direct the response, and charged more than 3,000 soldiers with the task of putting out fires.
The Lingyin TempleThe city of Hangzhou was besieged and captured by the advancing Mongol armies of Kublai Khan in 1276, three years before the final collapse of the empire. The capital of the new Yuan Dynasty was established in the city of Dadu (Beijing).
The Venetian Marco Polo supposedly visited Hangzhou in the late 13th century. His book refers to the city as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world." He called the city Kinsay (or Kinsai) which simply means "capital" in Chinese (actually Polo used a Persianized version of the word). Although he exaggerated that the city was over one hundred miles in diameter and had 12,000 stone bridges, he still presented elegant prose about the country: "The number and wealth of the merchants, and the amount of goods that passed through their hands, was so enormous that no man could form a just estimate thereof."
The renowned 14th century Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta said it was "the biggest city I have ever seen on the face of the earth."