I was quite excited to visit the Leifeng Pagoda. It was quite prominent when I was at the shores of West Lake that I immediately headed to it. This probably one of the more important places here in the West Lake as it accepts an entrance fee to see the pagoda. I was a bit dumbfounded to find out about this, I would later realize why they were charging a fee to begin with. The usual tourist crowd was there but not really that bad. After going through the entrance gate, I was surprised to see flight of escalators at the foot of the pagoda.
The sight of an escalator at the supposedly ancient pagoda was quite a shock for me, I was shaking my head in disbelief, then I tried to rationalize why there is an escalator here. Probably because of their focus on being tourist friendly. The tourists that come here to the West Lake are of the older type so asking them to climb up a long flight of stairs might sound unreasonable. Anyway, I still took the escalator up since I probably paid for its construction upon entering.
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