The three-day Hangzhou journey is our most popular introductory trip: a full meal at each of the three great temples, then a tea visit to Longjing village, and a sunset over West Lake to finish.
Lingyin, Jingci and Faxi cook in completely different registers. Lingyin leans towards the Jiangnan literati, its noodles cooked in Tianzhu spring water; Jingci leans on West Lake produce, turning water shield into a vegetarian roast goose; Faxi is the strictest about ritual, keeping the mealtime form complete. Eat three meals in one day and you can tell the three branches of Jiangnan temple cooking apart.
Last spring a 47-year-old Hangzhou local joined this trip. She said afterwards: 'I have lived in Hangzhou for forty years, and this is the first time I have eaten three meals in three different temples.'
What surprised us most was that she later brought her eighty-year-old mother to do it again. Perhaps that is where the real value of this journey lies: the threshold is low enough to bring your family, and yet not so shallow that you forget it the day after.
We suggest three days rather than two. All three refectories keep fixed hours, and squeezing them into two days means a constant rush, which is exactly what loses the elegance — Jiangnan's vegetarian food was slow before it was elegant.