The booking wall verified
These sell out or block foreigners if you arrive unprepared — the dates, the official link, and whether your passport works.
West Lake
✓ 2026-06-08- Price
- Free (still needs booking)
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Open public lakeside — no ticket and no reservation for the lake itself. A few interior sub-sites and boats are paid separately.
Free and open UNESCO scenic area. The classic loop is 3-4 hours on foot; rental bikes and the ¥55 boat are optional, not required.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Lingyin Temple & Feilai Feng
✓ 2026-06-08- Price
- Free (still needs booking)
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Free since ~Nov 2025, but now needs a real-name, time-slot reservation via the official Alipay/WeChat mini-program '杭州灵隐飞来峰'. Your passport works for the real-name step. There is no website checkout — lingyinsi.org is Chinese-only and does not take bookings.
Big change: Feilai Feng used to charge ¥45 and the temple ¥30 at the gate; as of late Nov 2025 both are free but reservation is mandatory. Go before 9am — the grotto carvings are the underrated half. OTAs also list it but you don't need them.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City (Liangzhu Ancient City Park)
✓ 2026-06-08- Price
- ¥60
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Real-name online reservation; passport is accepted as valid ID for both booking and admission. Daily cap around 11,000. Book via the official QR code / WeChat; groups by email (lzyz5300@126.com) with name + ID number.
This is the paid archaeological PARK (¥60), not the free Liangzhu Museum. Hours 9:00-17:00, last entry 16:00. The English visit page is on liangzhusite.com.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Liangzhu Museum
✓ 2026-06-08- Price
- Free (still needs booking)
- Foreigners
- Passport works
- Resellers
- None official
Free, but real-name online reservation required via the Liangzhu Museum WeChat official account; passport is accepted for registration. Groups of 20+ book via WeChat, capped 1,000/day.
Free, closed Mondays. Distinct from the paid Liangzhu Ancient City Park up the road. English visit info is mirrored on liangzhusite.com.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Zhejiang Provincial Museum
✓ 2026-06-08- Price
- Free (still needs booking)
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Individual walk-up; free, no reservation since the 2024 Zhejiang 'no-reservation' policy. Passport only matters at the security check. Only group visits still need to book.
Free across all branches (Zhijiang Hall, Gushan Hall, West Lake Art Gallery). Working English toggle on the site.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
China National Tea Museum
✓ 2026-06-08- Price
- Free (still needs booking)
- Foreigners
- Passport works
Walk-up; free national museum, no ticket or reservation for individuals. Passport only for any on-site security check.
Two branches (Shuangfeng Hall, Longjing Hall) in the tea hills. Full English/Japanese/Korean site. A natural pairing with a Longjing tea-village walk.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Songcheng (Songcheng Romance Park)
✓ 2026-06-08- Price
- —
- Foreigners
- Unclear
Paid theme park. Official channels are a WeChat mini-program and the hotline 400-8888-518; the official English site has no self-serve checkout and doesn't state whether the mini-program takes passports. Most foreigners end up buying through an OTA with passport.
Theme park plus the 'Romance Show'. Touristy but a reliable rainy-afternoon option; skip if your days are tight.
Source: official ticketing · re-checked monthly
Landing & registration
The first-24-hours facts: hotels, police registration, and whether your card works.
- Hotels take foreigners
- Mixed — check first
- Foreign card via Alipay/WeChat
- Works
- Police registration
- Stay where they can register foreign guests with the police; mid-range chains do it routinely.
Eat like a local
What to order, where locals actually queue, and the food-street traps to skip.
River shrimp stir-fried with Longjing tea leaves; delicate, barely seasoned.
Order with rice and one braised dish; it's a light plate.
A glossy braised pork-belly cube named for the poet-governor Su Dongpo.
One cube per person; it's richer than it looks.
Whole grass carp poached and dressed in a bright sweet-and-sour vinegar glaze.
A classic that splits opinion; order it fresh, not pre-made, and eat it hot.
Longjing shrimp (tea-leaf stir-fried), dongpo pork (braised belly named for the poet-governor), and West Lake vinegar fish. The first two travel well to any decent restaurant; the fish is divisive, so order one for the table, not per person.
Restaurants with a lake view charge roughly double for the same dishes you'll get two streets inland. Pay it once for sunset if you like, then eat where the Hangzhou office workers do, around Hefang street's side lanes, not on the postcard strip itself.
The honest layer
The part a tourism board will never print.
The headline change for 2026: as of late November 2025, Lingyin Temple and the Feilai Feng grotto grounds are free. They used to cost ¥45 plus ¥30 bought at the gate. The catch is a mandatory real-name, time-slot reservation through the official Alipay or WeChat mini-program '杭州灵隐飞来峰'. Your passport works for the real-name step, so foreigners can book directly — but there is no English website checkout, and walk-ups without a slot get turned away on busy days. Book the day before, pick an early slot, and the carvings will be near-empty.
On national holidays West Lake absorbs hundreds of thousands of visitors a day and the lakeside path becomes a slow march. If your dates touch Golden Week, see the lake at 6-8am and spend midday in the tea hills instead: same scenery, a tenth of the people.
In Longjing village, 'pre-rain' top-grade tea is real but so is the markup ladder: the same leaves run ¥200 to ¥3000+ per jin depending on the room you're sitting in. Taste before buying, buy small, and treat any 'government price list' on the wall as theater.
Walking and cycling the West Lake causeways costs nothing and is the better experience anyway. The pricey draw is the boat to the three islands, where touts at the docks quote inflated rates and skip the public ferry. Buy boat tickets at the official kiosks, or just stay on the shore.
Liangzhu is two separate sites a short hop apart. The Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City is the paid park — ¥60, real-name reservation, daily cap around 11,000, passport accepted. The Liangzhu Museum is free, also reservation-required, and closed Mondays. If you only have a half-day, the park is the UNESCO experience; the museum is the air-conditioned context. Both take your passport for booking; neither sells at a walk-up window.
Straight answers
Does West Lake need a ticket or reservation?
No — the lake and its causeways are free public space, open all hours. Individual paid sights around it (pagodas, gardens, boats) are optional add-ons you can decide on the spot.
Is Lingyin Temple still ticketed?
No. Since late November 2025 both the temple and the Feilai Feng grotto grounds are free, reversing the old ¥45 + ¥30 gate tickets. The trade-off is a mandatory real-name, time-slot reservation via the official Alipay or WeChat mini-program '杭州灵隐飞来峰'; your passport works for it. Book a day ahead and pick an early slot.
How many days does Hangzhou need?
Two covers the classics: a West Lake loop plus Lingyin Temple, then the Longjing tea hills the next morning. Add a third for the canal district, the Liangzhu UNESCO site and the wetlands if you want quiet.
Is Hangzhou easy without Chinese?
Among the easiest big stops: heavy English signage around the lake, metro to most sights, and mobile pay everywhere via Alipay (Hangzhou is its hometown). The tea villages are the one place to have your translation app ready. The main friction now is reservations — Lingyin and Liangzhu run through Chinese mini-programs, though passport-based real-name booking works.