First ask for directions at reception desk of your hotel written in Chinese to go to East Lake. Show this the taxi driver. We took a taxi from our hotel (Howard Johnson) which braught us to the East Lake park entrance north of the Hubei Museum. From there (no entrance fee) we started walking trough the park. We had told the taxi driver to pick us up again 2,5 hours later to bring us back to the hotel. This worked perfectly.