Xiaoying Island and the Three Pools (West Lake)

The Xiaoying Island and the Three Pools Mirroring the Moon are the famous symbols of the West Lake in Hangzhou. The scenery, together with the Middle Lake Pavilion and the Ruan Master Islet, is called the "Three Beautiful Islands in the Center of the West Lake". The Xiaoying Island was formed by dredging up the lake's bottom sand in the Ming Dynasty. On the island, there are a few small lakes in it and tiny islets inside these lakes. Antique bridges, beautiful pavilions and decorative low banks are dotted all around. The Mutual Understanding Pavilion at the southern tip of the Xiaoying Island incarnates the tranquility of the West Lake. The name of the pavilion came from a concept in Buddhism, which means "we have known each other in our hearts without talking".

The three lighthouse-shaped pagodas on the lake near the Xiaoying Island were built during the famous writer Su Dongbo as the Northern Song Dynasty official in Hangzhou. In the Ming Dynasty, the pagodas were all rebuilt. Each of them is 2m in height and distributed as angles of an equilateral triangle with every side 62m in length. It is said the pagodas to repel the evil spirits that may be hiding in the bottom of the West Lake. There is a Hangzhou folk legend told that the three pagodas are the three legs of a reversed incense burner, which the body of the burner is below the surface with a big snakehead (a kind of West Lake fish) hooked on it.