Broken Bridge (Duan Qiao)

Broken Bridge, known in Chinese as Duan Qiao, sits at the eastern end of the Bai Causeway on the north shore of West Lake in Hangzhou's Xihu District. Despite its name, the arched stone bridge is intact; the name refers to the visual effect in winter, when snow melts first on the sun-facing half of the bridge's arch, leaving the shaded half still white and creating the appearance of a break in the span. The bridge is one of the settings for the folk tale of the White Snake, in which the heroine Bai Suzhen first meets Xu Xian here, and it remains a well-known meeting point in Chinese popular culture. Visitors walk across the low humpbacked bridge for views along the Bai Causeway toward Gushan Island and across open water toward the Broken Bridge Residual Snow pavilion, one of the traditional Ten Scenes of West Lake. A stop here typically takes 20 to 30 minutes, often combined with a longer walk along the Bai Causeway toward Solitary Hill. The bridge and causeway are busiest around sunrise and sunset, when both photographers and evening strollers converge, and extremely crowded during Chinese New Year and Golden Week. The best vantage points are from the causeway itself looking back at the bridge's arch reflected in the lake, and from the small rise near the pavilion just east of the bridge, which frames the bridge against the lake and the distant Baochu Pagoda on the hillside beyond.