West Lake Dream Journey

Author: Zhang Dai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: My later years were not auspicious, and I was separated from West Lake for twenty-eight years. Yet West Lake never failed to enter my dreams, and in my dreams, West Lake was never apart from me for a single day. In the years Jia Wu and Ding You, I visited West Lake twice. The Outer Lou of the Shang family, the Qiu family’s couplets residence, the Qian and Yu family’s villas, and my own Jiyuan—this series of lakeside estates now remain only as ruins. Thus, what I cherished in my dreams was no longer present in West Lake. Upon looking at the Broken Bridge, I saw that all the former willow trees and peach blossoms, singing and dancing pavilions had been submerged by floodwaters, leaving not a hundredth part intact. I quickly fled, thinking that I had come to West Lake, but what I saw was not as I had imagined. It was better to preserve the West Lake in my dreams, which remained intact and unharmed.