Yellow Dragon Cave

I read that there was a Yellow Dragon Cave in a park on the other side of the hill from the Shangri-La Hotel in Hangzhou.  I was intrigued by the possibility of exploring a cave.  I was staying with friends on this trip to Hangzhou and their apartment was a little northwest of where the cave was supposed to be located.  When I told them about the cave they said it was just a park called Yellow Dragon Park, no cave.  But this couldn't be, I read about a cave so it must be there.  Now I really needed to go investigate this place.   My tour guide for the morning was Chen Ming, the teenage daughter of my friend's housekeeper.  She's learning English in school and wanted to practice with me.  Her English is much better than my Chinese.  We had a lot of laughs. 

We headed out for the park first thing in the morning.  The walk to Yellow Dragon Park was much shorter than I thought.  After passing the dragon poles, we found several woman dancing.  I love these little surprises.

Park Entrance

Then we walked a little further and came upon an opera performance at an open air pavillion.  Opera seems to be still enjoyed by the older generations but Chen Ming wasn't very interested in watching it.  When I've had discussions about Chinese opera with other friends they usually said opera is something their parents watch and enjoy.  I found that once I got used to the different sounds of the musical instruments and performers singing, opera is a very interesting art form in itself.

Chinese Opera performance in the park pavillion

How fabulous is this picture below of the people playing cards in the park.  Can you believe this is the same park!?!

Playing cards

Then a little further into the park we find the Yellow Dragon.  Its a waterfall and the water flows out of the dragons mouth.  But its not a cave, trust me I checked.

After finding all these wonderful things in the park we just had to keep exploring.  That cave has to be here somewhere.   The next thing we came upon was the Wish Realizing Terrace.

And then a little further down the path, there it was, the entrance to the Yellow Dragon Cave.  The quality of the photo isn't very good but there it was.  It does exist and we found it.  It was closed off as you can see but that didn't matter.  We found it!

If you're ever in Hangzhou, Yellow Dragon Park is worth the time to visit.