A kilometer or so north of Shou Xihu, in the far northwest of town, and well worth an hour of your time, Darning Si (Temple of Great Light; daily 7.30am-5pm; RMB18) occupies a huge area on top of a hill. The temple, originally built in the fifth century, is experiencing a boom- much of what you see today has in fact 
been reconstructed after damage during the Taiping Uprising (see box, p.458), while the temple’s centerpiece, a Memorial Hall to honor the Chinese monk Jian Zhen, was only built in 1973. A profound scholar of the eighth century, Jian Zhen was invited to teach in Japan, only to find that on five successive occasions storms and misfortune drove him back to Chinese waters. Finally, on his sixth attempt, at the age of 66, he made it to Japan and sensibly decided against trying the return trip. Credited with having introduced ritso Buddhism to Japan, he is still much revered there, and a nine- storey Japanese-funded pagoda has been built here to replace an original Song-dynasty structure that was razed by fire. There is an excellent Buddhist vegetarian restaurant on the premises, which you can eat at if you ask one of the monks. Some way north of the temple itself, there are parks and gardens laid out in 1751 around a natural spring, the so-called Fifth Spring under Heaven. You can sample the waters, and the local tea, from a cool, breezy teahouse over- looking the water, where plump goldfish and carp glide past.
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