City guide · Zhejiang
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
The charm of Xixi is not in any particular sight. Once you are in among it, you forget the names of the spots — what you remember is a tree, a bridge, a blade of grass, a flower, a bird. — A note in the source guide
A traveller's note in the source guide
Rowing is the best way in. There is no channel too narrow for the small boats, and the sense of a winding path leading somewhere hidden is absolute. — A note in the source guide
A traveller's note in the source guide
Xixi does not look like a park. It looks like a place a city grew around and then decided not to pave. Ten square kilometres of channels, fish ponds, reed beds and persimmon trees sit inside Hangzhou's western districts, five kilometres from West Lake, and the water grid is old enough that the Song court established a town here in 988 — which is why Xixi is described locally as a thousand-year-old town as well as a wetland.
The character is deliberate spareness. Reeds, mulberry, bishop's-wood, low bridges, old cottages, a few scholars' villas tucked among the trees. The four words used for it — cold, wild, thin, elegant — mean something closer to austere than to barren: this is a working landscape of dykes and fish ponds that scholars once hid in, not a garden built to be looked at.
What it asks of you is a decision about how to move. The park's own advice is unambiguous: the best way to see Xixi is to float, because a small boat goes where no path does. But the land route gives you the gardens — Meizhu Villa, with its plums and bamboo; Xixi Thatched Hall, built by a Ming academician who wanted exactly this kind of quiet; Gao's Manor, where the Kangxi emperor once stepped off a boat — and the stone slab bridges that the boat slips under without you noticing.
It is also the only big sight in Hangzhou that closes early and stops selling tickets earlier still. Gate and boat sales end an hour before the park shuts: 16:30 from April to October, 16:00 from November to March. Get there at opening, do the water route while the light is low and the channels are quiet, then walk back through the gardens and be out with the afternoon still ahead of you.
Xixi Wetland
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Xixi is a rare in-town secondary wetland: 10.08 sq km of channels, ponds and reed beds less than 5 km from West Lake, and the first park in China to hold urban, farming and cultural wetland in one boundary. Nowhere else in the country offers that combination this close to a downtown.
The park's own verdict: floating is the best way in, because no channel is too narrow for the small boats. A sculled boat from Zhoujia pier takes about 1.5 hours down water that closes over your head in reeds, and the boatman will tell you which vessel Ge You sat in during If You Are The One.
The two images Xixi is known for. Around Qiuxue Nunnery the reed beds turn into an unbroken white in autumn, and wild duck break out of them and cut across the channel as your boat approaches. On the dykes, the persimmons come red at the same season.
Xixi Thatched Hall was built by Feng Mengzhen, a late-Ming chancellor of the Imperial College, because he was drawn by the place's cold, wild, thin and elegant character. Xixi Waterside Pavilion held the Lanxi Book House and the Yongshu Library for reading and storing books; Meizhu Villa was named for plum and bamboo, the two plants that stand for integrity.
Xixi tea has had a reputation of its own since long before Longjing was famous — locally rated at ten times Longjing. On Hezhu Street it comes in a white bowl, deep-coloured and sweet on the palate, at ¥1 a bowl. There is no better-value drink in Hangzhou.
Xixi's characteristic bridge is the three-holed flat stone slab bridge: level deck, no railings or very low ones, built by a Qing Daoguang-era mason named Zhang Daxian. No slope and no rail meant it was cheap and a farmer with a load could walk straight across. Many older bridges — Wenyu, Dexian, Yingchun — are gone, remembered only by their stories.
Suggested routes
The signature circuit: all water, and the whole reason people come.
Board at Zhoujia pier just inside the main gate and take the boat out. The route runs through Meizhu Villa, past Bo'an and the Yanshui fishing hamlet, under Xiaogu Bridge and out at Deep Pool Mouth, the walled harbour that cannot be reached except by boat.
Watch for Duck Bend on the way: the name comes either from the shape of the bend, crooked like a duck's neck, or from the flocks of ducks that feed in the shallows there. Either way it is the wildest corner of the park.
Stops: Zhoujia pierMeizhu VillaYanshui FisheryDuck BendDeep Pool Mouth
Run the same route backwards. The park's classic boat circuit assumes the Wen'er West Road entrance; entering from the other side simply reverses the order and finishes at Zhoujia village instead of starting there.
Stops: Zijin'gang Road gate
Everything on foot, including the wetland botanic garden and the gardens.
Start at Zhoujia village and walk round through Meizhu and Bo'an to the Yanshui fishing hamlet, then out at Deep Pool Mouth with its three enormous old camphor trees, and on to Hezhu Street for the shops and a ¥1 bowl of tea.
Finish along Fu Dyke and into Gao's Manor, the Kangxi-era villa, before completing the loop back to Zhoujia village.
Stops: Zhoujia villageDeep Pool MouthHezhu StreetGao's Manor
The point of the land route is that it has grass. At lunchtime find a patch of flowers beside the water, spread the cloth you brought, and eat with the sky for a roof and the birds for company. The route also passes the wetland botanic garden, so you get two things for one walk.
Stops: Flower bedsWetland botanic garden
The one the park recommends: boat in, walk back out.
Board at Zhoujia pier and let the boatman set the pace down the inner channels. You pass Meizhu Villa, Xixi Plum Villa and Xixi Waterside Pavilion — the scholars' reading and book-storing pavilions, alongside the Lanxi Book House — and step off at Qiuxue Nunnery, in the middle of the open water.
Stops: Zhoujia pierMeizhu VillaXixi Waterside PavilionQiuxue Nunnery
Walk out from the nunnery to the Yanshui fishing hamlet, cross Xiaogu Bridge, take in Deep Pool Mouth and Hezhu Street, then follow Fu Dyke past the wetland botanic garden and Gao's Manor and back to Zhoujia village.
Do not try to see everything. The guide's own warning is that Xixi rewards not being greedy: take the water and the land, drift, and leave the rest.
Stops: Yanshui FisheryHezhu StreetBotanic gardenGao's Manor
Sights
The heart of the wetland
First built in the Song and originally called Dasheng Nunnery; the Ming brothers Shen of Xixi rebuilt it and brought in a noted monk, and the late-Ming scholar Chen Jiru gave it its present name from the Tang line 'autumn snow veils the fishing boat'. Zhou Qingyun of Nanxun rebuilt it between 1919 and 1921. It stands on an island in the most central water of the wetland, walled by reeds that go white and cold in autumn, and is the core of the 'eight autumn-snow views'.
Tip Come in autumn and stay on the boat a moment before landing — the reeds read best from the water, and the ducks put on the show on the approach.
Boats only
Also called Deep Pool Harbour, in Shenkantou village, Jiangcun. The banks break off all round and there is no way into the harbour without a boat — the old Nanzhangzi records say it cannot be crossed without one, and that a dragon lives in the unfathomable deep. Three enormous old camphor trees give one bank a sense of history and silence while the opposite bank is busy; the contrast is the point.
Tip Stand on the camphor-tree bank for five minutes. Everyone rushes past to the busy side, and the quiet side is the one you will remember.
The Kangxi villa
Also called Xixi Villa, built between 1657 and 1664 as the Xixi retreat of Gao Shiqi, a man whose career began with the Kangxi emperor noticing his calligraphy on a plaque reading 'the Son of Heaven values heroes' at a rebuilt Guandi temple — Gao was then selling paintings in the temple market to survive after his father's death and repeated examination failures. Kangxi visited by boat in 1689, wrote the two characters 'bamboo window' and a poem in which the lines run 'smoke-blue at the bamboo window, snow-scented on the plum bank'.
Tip Eat here if you are going to eat inside the park at all — the courtyard setting is the best of the park's restaurants and the prices are the same as the others.
Plum and bamboo
Built by the Qing scholar Zhang Cibai near Qiu family gate, south of Bo'an. Plum stands for solitary integrity and bamboo for upright character, and the name declared the owner's own — friends from across Jiangsu and Zhejiang, among them Fei Danxu, Zhang Tingji, Wei Qiansheng, Qian Du and Dai Xi, inscribed and painted for him. Under his reputation the villa became well enough known to restore 'seeking plum at Xixi' as one of Hangzhou's famous scenes.
Tip Come in late winter or early spring if you want the plum in flower; the rest of the year it is a quiet bamboo courtyard worth ten minutes.
A Ming scholar's hideaway
The villa of Feng Mengzhen, chancellor of the Imperial College in the late Ming, built beside Yongxing Temple on Anle Hill because he was drawn by Xixi's cold, wild, thin and elegant character. The buildings divide north and south around a fish pond: the south front block is a two-storey 'Twin Snow Hall' in the style of a wealthy Hangzhou household, open and high; behind it the study, named 'True Studio', doubles as a Buddhist room; to the north a thatched pavilion reached by a little bridge was for viewing plum, playing with bamboo and drinking.
Tip The 'cold, wild, thin, elegant' phrase is the key to the whole park. Read it here and the rest of Xixi makes sense.
Books and blossom
Xixi has always produced scholars, and the Waterside Pavilion is where they came to store books, read and meet friends — today it holds the Lanxi Book House and the Yongshu Library, so you can follow the reclusive scholars' deliberate withdrawal into the thick of the trees. Xixi Plum Villa sits in the southeast beside the Qiuxue Nunnery protection zone; the plum along the Southern Song imperial road here has been famous since the Song, and the 'Cold-Detached Life Tea House' is named for the line 'bamboo shading the plum, deep and still and clear — here fame and profit both go cold'.
Tip Both are quiet and both are small. They are the places that explain why Xixi is called a cultural wetland rather than just a wet one.
Shopping and tea
The park's leisure and shopping street, showing Xixi's folk culture and local produce. In the tea houses you drink Xixi tea, rated by locals at ten times Longjing; in the shops you buy Xixi flower baskets, blue calico, Xixi rice wine, rice cakes and the Gudang flat persimmon. Traditional crafts have settled here too, and on the square by the Hezhu pagoda you can catch the Xixi boat-boxing, the eighteen weapons, dragon and lion dances.
Tip Buy your tea here rather than at the gate shops. And buy the malt sugar for the pulling, not just the eating.
Birds and 600 plants
The botanic garden covers about 55 hectares of open ground with more than 600 plant species — sit on the bank, watch the aquatic plants and eat the malt sugar you bought on Hezhu Street. Xialongtan is the largest natural ecological protection zone in the park, thick with aquatic and land vegetation and wildlife, and a birdwatcher's paradise: staff have put up a viewing platform so you can watch whole flocks rise at once.
Tip The best hour here is early morning, when the birds are moving and the tour groups have not arrived.
Activities
Dragon Boat Festival
For Xixi village the high point of the year is dragon-boating — praying to the dragon king for fair weather and for the village to prosper, and the one day the men of the village all gather. Jiangcun's boats come in three styles: the fully decorated, the half decorated and the bare. They are not raced for speed but judged on skill, and the four-character name 'dragon boat gathering' is said to have been granted by the Qianlong emperor.
Tip At ¥280-plus a head it is not cheap, but if your dates fall on the festival it is the one thing in Xixi that cannot be done on any other day.
Cast a net
You go out on a small sculled boat with a boatman and a fisherman, and learn to throw the net — do not underestimate it, a wet net has real weight in it. The water at Xixi holds many species and the flesh is genuinely sweet. At the end you take away roughly 3.5 jin of fish, prawns and vegetables that you caught.
Tip Go early in the day; the fish cooperate better and you will have the catch in hand before the park fills.
The cheap lunch
The guide's own recommendation, and the best-value meal available in Xixi: shop at a supermarket before you arrive, then spread a cloth in a patch of flowers beside the water with the sky for a roof, grass for a carpet, flowers for a screen and insects and birds for company. It genuinely improves the food and the day.
Tip Bring a bag for your own rubbish. This is a working wetland and the reeds are not a bin.
Near the park
Just outside the wetland there is a free viewing area with a small tower on it. Climb to the top and you get the whole wetland laid out at once — the only place you can see the shape of the thing rather than being inside it.
Tip Do it at the start of the day if you can. Seeing the whole plan first makes the boat route much easier to follow.
If you have spare hours
Scattered through the park are the smaller religious and domestic sites: Jiang Xianggong Shrine, founded by the Jiang clan in the Southern Song Jianyan era and now standing on Hezhu Street; Qushui Nunnery, praised in the Xixi Hundred Verses for its winding streams, golden chrysanthemum and snow plum, and now a centre of Buddhist culture; Xixi Households, a reconstruction of local farm life using real implements; and Jiaolu Nunnery with the Li and Hang shrines, once where scholars met to play chess, write and paint.
Tip These are the filler that makes a slow day. If you are moving at the pace Xixi wants, you will run into all of them anyway.
Food
Longjing is China's most famous tea, but Xixi tea has had a reputation of its own since long ago. It comes in a plain white bowl, deep in colour, sweet on the palate, at ¥1 a bowl on Hezhu Street. Locals put it at ten times Longjing; at a yuan a bowl you can test the claim yourself.
Made by fermenting steamed glutinous rice with the wine starter, and eaten with the grains still in it. You can also boil it up with water, drop in an egg for sweet wine-lees egg, or add brown sugar or honey. The alcohol content is low enough that nobody gets drunk. Cold in summer it cools you right through; hot in winter with dates or an egg it is sweet and warming.
Green plum, wine-cured dried fish and dried bamboo shoots — the three things Xixi is known for producing. Try them even if you decide afterwards that they are not extraordinary; they are the product of the villagers' own labour, and the dried fish in particular travels well.
The park's restaurants all serve the same thing: Xixi ecological dishes and local farmhouse cooking, which in practice means river fish, wild vegetables, bamboo and free-range chicken done in the Hangzhou style. It is good, it is not subtle, and it runs ¥50–100 a head.
Sold on Hezhu Street and permanently popular. It is very sweet, but the point is as much the pulling as the eating — buy a piece and work it between your hands until it goes pale and glossy. It is the cheapest entertainment in the park.
The local persimmon, sold on Hezhu Street and along the dykes in season. Autumn at Xixi means two colours: white reeds and these, hanging orange-red over the water.
The Hezhu Street snack trade: steamed rice cakes and glutinous balls, cheap and portable, and exactly the thing to be eating while you walk the stone paths. Buy a couple and keep walking.
Where to eat
Ecological and farmhouse
The park's principal kitchen, serving Xixi ecological dishes and local country cooking in a room fitted out old-style — eight-immortal tables and benches, an L-shaped counter — with windows to look out over the water while you eat. The strongest of the park's restaurants.
In the Kangxi villa
Set inside Gao's Manor, and eating there feels like stepping back into the Kangxi era — a genuinely different experience from the other park restaurants. The cooking is decent and the service is the best of the group.
The quiet one
Inside Xixi Plum Villa, and it feels like eating in a very out-of-the-way hamlet — bamboo and flowers at the window, entirely unspoilt. People finish the meal and still do not want to leave.
Bamboo view
Inside Meizhu Villa. The menu is much the same as everywhere else in the park, but if your walk brings you past at lunchtime it is worth stopping — the bamboo at the window does improve the food.
The splurge
A high-end Chinese hotel restaurant at the entrance to Gao's Manor, with showy fittings, Hangzhou cooking and Xixi ecological dishes. Come here for the room and the service rather than the value; it is the most expensive table in the park.
What the guide recommends
Every restaurant in the park costs ¥50-plus a head, and the guide's honest advice is not to eat in them at all. Shop at a supermarket on the way, spread a cloth among the flowers beside the water, and eat with the view for free. It is the single best-value meal in Xixi.
Where to stay
The honest advice
The source guide is blunt: do not stay in Xixi. The hotels inside are expensive, and there is no reason to pay for them — the park is not far from the city centre, the transport is good, and one day is all the place needs. Stay where the buses and metro are and leave early.
The oldest in Hangzhou
Hangzhou's first youth hostel, not near Xixi but 50 metres from West Lake and very well connected. Chinese architectural and aesthetic details give it real character: a relaxed courtyard, a garden terrace, and the open Blue Water cafe next door. It is in the golden location of the city and it fills up — book a long way ahead.
Quiet, near the food
At the foot of 'Heavenly Wind over Wushan', one of Hangzhou's ten new scenes — quiet despite being central. Buses to Wushan Square or Qingbo Gate both work; from No. 7 Siyi Road turn left and walk about a hundred metres up the hill. Hefang Street is close, which makes it the choice for anyone who came to eat.
Practicalities
Anything with a bus or metro line to the park works, and the two things that matter are an early start and a booked bed. Hangzhou has hostels on Nanshan Road, Wushan Square and Hupao Road; the mid-range chains cluster in the university district and around Wushan Square; and the luxury hotels sit at Wulin Square and on West Lake. Book online in advance, or ring 114 on the day and let them find you a room in your price band rather than walking from door to door.
Shopping
The best thing to buy here. It is on Hangzhou's intangible-heritage protection list, it is entirely local, and it is already being exported — but very few people still know how to make one. There are twelve varieties, including the five-point-star basket, the handbag basket, the hair basket and the six-cornered basket.
Neatly made and small enough to carry, and an accurate scale reproduction of a real Xixi boat — it looks good on a shelf at home. Around ¥50–60, which is fair for the work in it. Buy one and take it home.
Permanently popular on Hezhu Street. Very sweet, but people are buying the pulling as much as the taste — couples in particular are urged not to miss the process. Pull it between you until it goes pale.
Green plum, wine-cured dried fish and dried bamboo shoots. The guide's own warning: taste them and do not regret it even if you find nothing remarkable, because they are the product of the villagers' work. The dried fish is the one that travels.
Almost every Xixi household raised silkworms, and the embroidery shop on Hezhu Street sells only embroidery — the pieces are genuinely fine and worth collecting. Being hand-made, they are not cheap; if that bothers you, walk past.
The rest of the park's own souvenir line: a distinctive paper-cut series, silk scarves printed with the three dykes and ten scenes, silk fans, and self-brewed rice wine. None of it is expensive, and all of it is local.
Hezhu Street is the one shopping street inside the wetland and everything above is sold there. For anything else, the park is inside Hangzhou — the city's supermarkets and the Wushan and Hefang areas have the same goods at ordinary prices.
Getting around
Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport is in Xiaoshan, about an hour from the centre, with three terminals. The airport bus is the normal way in at ¥20, and it leaves from the waiting room north of Door 5 on the first floor of the terminal.
Hangzhou has two working stations: Chengzhan in the city, which almost all trains use, and Hangzhou South in Xiaoshan, formerly Xiaoshan station, which takes most of the rest and currently stands in for the closed Hangzhou East. From the railway station there is a free shuttle to the relevant long-distance coach station. Book by phone or online rather than queueing at the ticket office.
Hangzhou has four main long-distance coach stations: Jiubao Centre for Ningbo and Shanghai, the South station for Wenzhou and Fujian, the West station for Anhui and Jiangxi, and the North station for Suzhou and Nanjing. The coach centre is the largest and now holds most of what the old East station used to run.
Hangzhou metro line 1 opened in November 2012, ¥2 to ¥8 a ride. Buses cost ¥1–4 — K-prefixed services are generally ¥2, B-prefixed rapid buses ¥3–4 — and most fares halve in March, April, October and November. Almost all city buses are exact-fare with no change given, so carry coins. Most stops have electronic boards showing how many metres away each bus is.
Taxis flag at ¥11 for 3 km including the ¥1 fuel surcharge, then ¥2.5 a kilometre, rising to ¥3.75 beyond 10 km; four minutes of waiting counts as one kilometre. Public bikes come on a ¥300 card (¥200 deposit, ¥100 ride credit) with the first hour free, and a service point roughly every 300 m, most of them 24-hour. The Grand Canal water bus runs a half-hourly service from 07:00 to 18:00 at ¥3 off-peak and ¥5 at peak.
Tips
¥80 at the counter, ¥15–20 less booked in advance, and you collect at the ticket office. It is the easiest money you will save in Hangzhou and it also buys back your queueing time.
The park opens at 08:00 in summer and 08:30 in winter, and gate and boat sales stop an hour before closing. Xixi has been busy since If You Are The One was filmed here — start early and you still get the channels to yourself.
Free maps are available in the ticket office and you do not need anyone to walk you round. Anyone who approaches you at the entrance offering to guide is selling something you already have.
Every restaurant in the park runs ¥50–100 a head. Buy at a supermarket before you arrive, spread a cloth in the flowers beside the water, and eat with the sky for a roof and the birds for company.
There is a great deal of marsh and bog inside the park. The guide's warning is direct: there is a lot of beauty here, but be careful, because there are traps in the beauty. Stay on the paths and the boardwalks.
Every visitor to every place should look after the monuments and the planting. No scratching names into rock, bark or paintwork — this applies doubly in a protected wetland that is also someone's thousand-year-old town.
Practical
Xixi is a marsh with a ticket booth, not a list of monuments. Take the boat, walk a little, drink the ¥1 tea, and leave before the ticket office stops selling.
| Ticket | ¥80 at the gate; booked online in advance it is ¥15–20 cheaper and collected at the ticket office |
|---|---|
| Opening hours | 1 Apr–31 Oct, 08:00–17:30, gate and boat tickets stop selling 16:30; 1 Nov–31 Mar, 08:30–17:00, sales stop 16:00 |
| Time needed | About 1.5 hours by boat; three to four hours on foot; a combined day for both |
| Best months | Spring and autumn. From March the flower festival begins; autumn brings clear air, osmanthus, white reeds and red persimmons |
| Getting in | No station or airport at the park — arrive in Hangzhou (HGH, ¥20 airport bus) and take metro line 1 plus a bus. The classic entrance is on Wen'er West Road; entering from Zijin'gang Road reverses the route |
| Activities | Jiangcun dragon-boat experience from about ¥280 a head at Dragon Boat Festival; fisherman experience takes home about 3.5 jin of fish, prawns and vegetables |
| Eating | All park restaurants ¥50–100 a head except Yuehu Tower at ¥100–150; all open 08:30–16:30. Xixi tea ¥1 a bowl on Hezhu Street |
| Useful numbers | Tourism complaints 0571-96123; bus hotline 0571-85191122; Hangzhou tourist centre (Huanglong) 0571-87961729; (Wushan) 0571-87809951 |
| Hospitals | Hangzhou Hospital of TCM, 453 Tiyuchang Road, 0571-85827888; Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital, 158 Shangtang Road, 0571-85239988; First Hospital of Zhejiang, 79 Qingchun Road, 0571-87236352 |
Background
Xixi has passed through six phases: a distant prototype, formation under the Han and Tang, development under the Song and Yuan, flourishing under the Ming and Qing, shrinking under the Republic, and rebirth now. Four or five thousand years ago the low, wet ground here was flooded by the spring and summer torrents off Tianmu Mountain and became a lake; in drought the lake dried back to wetland. That appearing-and-vanishing behaviour is what historians call the prototype stage.
From the first year of the Eastern Han Xiping era to the end of the Five Dynasties, roughly a thousand years, the wetland formed. In the Song it took a further step: in 988, the first year of the Song emperor Taizong's Duan'gong era, the court formally established Xizhen town here, which is why Xixi can legitimately call itself a thousand-year-old town. Under the Ming and Qing the economy and culture on both banks advanced — fish farming, silkworms, bamboo and shoots, tea, fruit and vegetables became the specialities of the suburban countryside. After the Republic the wetland shrank steadily, and in the 1950s the founding of townships and factories across the Xixi area reduced it further.
Xixi sits on the edge of the subtropical monsoon belt: four clear seasons, plenty of light, abundant rain, and rich plant and animal life. Its listed character — white reeds and red persimmons, green mulberry and blue water, green bamboo and scented plum, egrets in flight and swallows on the wing, frogs calling and fish jumping — is summed up in the four characters cold, wild, thin and elegant, all of it natural rather than arranged.
An old poem praises it in the same terms: a thousand qing of reeds, ten li of islets, a dwelling fit for moon and better for autumn, yellow oranges and red persimmons and purple water-caltrop — enough to want nothing from the ten-thousand-household marquises. That is the ideal Xixi was describing: a place where living off the water was genuinely enough.
The reason Xixi still exists is that it was never worth draining. It was a working landscape — fish ponds, mulberry dykes, bamboo, persimmons — that fed the western edge of Hangzhou, and by the time the city reached it, the value of leaving water in the middle of a city had become obvious. It is now the first national wetland park in the country to combine urban wetland, farming wetland and cultural wetland in one boundary, and together with West Lake and Xiling it makes up Hangzhou's 'three xis'.
What that means practically is that Xixi is not a reconstruction. The boat channels, the dykes and the ponds are the original working fabric, the villas are real scholars' retreats, and the local marriage custom of fetching the bride by boat — the bridal sedan chair set in the bow and sculled to her house and back — comes from a place where no road reached. Go looking for a finished attraction and you will be disappointed. Go looking for a marsh that a city decided to keep, and it is one of the best things in Zhejiang.
The questions visitors ask us most about Xixi Wetland, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
¥80 at the gate, with no discount available on the day — that is the price. Booked online in advance you save ¥15–20 and collect the ticket at the ticket office, which also skips the queue. Gate and boat ticket sales stop an hour before closing: 16:30 from April to October and 16:00 from November to March.
Boat first, then foot — and if you only have time for one, take the boat. From Zhoujia pier a sculled boat runs about 1.5 hours through channels no path reaches, past Meizhu Villa, Xixi Plum Villa, Xixi Waterside Pavilion and out at Qiuxue Nunnery. Walking takes three to four hours and gives you the gardens and the bridges instead.
About 1.5 hours by boat, three to four hours on foot, and a combined day for both. The park's suggested routes are loops starting and finishing at Zhoujia village, so you never end up at an unfamiliar gate. Most people find the walking takes longer than they planned because they stop.
Autumn, closely followed by spring. Hangzhou is hot in summer and damp and cold in winter, so the shoulders are best. From March the flower festival starts; in autumn the air is clear, osmanthus is out, and the two signature sights are at their peak — reeds turned white around Qiuxue Nunnery and persimmons red on the dykes.
Restaurants inside run ¥50–100 a head for Hangzhou cooking, so the honest advice is to shop at a supermarket before you arrive and picnic on the grass among the flowers. Nothing inside a scenic area is cheap anywhere, but Xixi's are not extortionate either, and eating with the water in front of you is worth the markup once.
No. The lodgings inside the park are expensive, and there is no reason to pay for them: Xixi is close to central Hangzhou, well served by bus and metro, and one day covers it. Stay anywhere with good transport in the city and be at the gate when it opens.
No. Take a free map at the ticket office and ignore anyone at the gate offering to walk you round — with the map you can find everything yourself. The routes are loops and the signage inside is adequate; the one thing to watch is the clock, because ticket sales stop an hour before the park closes.
The Xixi flower basket is the real souvenir — a Hangzhou intangible-heritage craft, twelve varieties including the five-point star, the handbag and the six-cornered baskets, and very few people still make them. Then malt sugar from Hezhu Street, Xixi rice wine, blue calico, dried fish and bamboo-shoot dried in the Xixi 'three treasures', and a model of a Xixi boat at around ¥50–60.
Plan this trip
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Gulangyu
City guide · 12 tours
A car-free island of colonial villas, pianos and cats, twenty minutes off Xiamen — and the one place where the trick is simply to stay the night.
Fuzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,200-year-old capital of banyan trees and mountains-within-the-city, where the Ming lanes of Sanfang Qixiang meet the dockyard that built China's modern navy.
Lugu Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,680 m lake on the Yunnan–Sichuan border, home to China's last matrilineal people, pig-trough canoes and a great deal of doing nothing.
Xishuangbanna
City guide · 12 tours
China's tropical south — rainforest, wild elephants, Dai villages and the Mekong, wrapped around the gateway city of Jinghong.
Shangri-La
City guide · 12 tours
A Tibetan town at 3,300 m in Yunnan's Diqing prefecture — monasteries, grassland, prayer wheels and cold thin air.
Nanchang
City guide · 12 tours
Jiangxi's 'hero city' on the Gan River — one great Tang pavilion, a 160-metre Ferris wheel, and the best claypot soup you will eat in China.
Hefei
City guide · 12 tours
Anhui's 2,000-year-old capital: the hometown of China's model judge, a moat-turned-garden ring, and the fast rail gateway to Huangshan.
Hongcun
City guide · 12 tours
A 900-year-old Hui village laid out as an ox, with water running to every door and a mirror-still crescent pond at its heart.
Wuhan
City guide · 12 tours
Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
City guide · 12 tours
Hunan's loud, young capital: a 3,000-year-old city that eats chilli-hot food, stays up all night and treats foot massage as a civic duty.
Fenghuang Ancient Town
City guide · 12 tours
The stilt-house river town of Shen Congwen's 'Border Town' — glowing lanterns, stepping stones and the best two nights in western Hunan.
Lushan
City guide · 12 tours
A cloud-wrapped granite mountain with a Victorian hill station on top, waterfalls in three tiers, and the mist that Su Shi said you could never see through.
Wuyuan
City guide · 12 tours
China's 'most beautiful countryside' — dozens of white-walled Huizhou villages strung along streams and terraced into the hills, and two weeks a year of gold.
Mount Heng (Hengshan, Hunan)
City guide · 12 tours
The South Great Peak: a pilgrimage mountain of 72 summits where the temples run all the way to the top, and the sunrise over the cloud sea is the whole point.
Huangshan
City guide · 12 tours
Yellow Mountain: 82 granite peaks of twisted pines and grotesque rock, a sea of cloud that changes by the hour, and hot springs at the foot.
Wudang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The Taoist first mountain of China — a gilded bronze hall on a 1,612 m summit, temples hung off cliff faces, and the birthplace of tai chi.
Luoyang
City guide · 12 tours
Thirteen dynasties, 100,000 Buddhas carved into a river cliff, China's first Buddhist temple — and a whole city that turns peony-pink every April.
Yuntai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO geopark in Henan where red-stone gorges squeeze a river to a slot, a 314 m waterfall drops in one plunge, and every path leads to another pool.
Rizhao
City guide · 12 tours
A low-key Shandong beach town where the sun rises straight out of the Yellow Sea, the sand runs 60 km and a seafood dinner costs less than a coffee in Shanghai.
Yantai
City guide · 12 tours
A northern Shandong port of fairy-tale cliffs, wine cellars and long golden beaches — where emperors once hunted the elixir of life and China's wine industry still begins.
Lianyungang
City guide · 12 tours
A working Jiangsu port with a myth in the middle of it — the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, a sea causeway to a big island beach, and some of the cheapest seafood on the coast.
Sanqing Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical forest of granite pillars in Jiangxi — the Python Out of the Mountain, the Goddess of the East Sea, two cable cars and a cliff-hugging walkway at 1,660 metres.
Tianjin
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's port city next door — a river of 24 bridges, 2,000 colonial villas, and the best street breakfast in northern China.
Datong
City guide · 12 tours
A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
City guide · 12 tours
Shanxi's provincial capital and noodle heartland — the spring of Jinci, two Ming pagodas, and a museum that explains the whole province.
Pingyao
City guide · 12 tours
China's best-preserved ancient walled town — a Ming wall, the first Chinese bank, and two temples of painted clay just outside the gates.
Wutai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
City guide · 12 tours
China's finest grassland — a 263,000 km² sweep of steppe, birch forest and border river, best driven with the windows down.
The Forbidden City
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
Sanya
City guide · 12 tours
China's only true winter-sun coast — four very different bays, a coral island and a 108 m sea Buddha, all at 18° north.
Haikou
City guide · 12 tours
Hainan's capital is the island's living city — 600-year-old arcade streets, a volcanic village, and a morning-tea-to-midnight food culture.
Beihai
City guide · 12 tours
24 km of fine white sand on one side, a volcanic island of coral and lava on the other — plus a 19th-century arcade old street in between.
Nanning
City guide · 12 tours
Guangxi's green capital is a gateway to Detian Falls, Beihai and Vietnam — and a genuinely excellent food city if you let it slow you down.
Guangxi
City guide · 12 tours
One autonomous region, a dozen landscapes — limestone peaks and rice terraces in the north, a Vietnam border and a warm gulf coast in the south.
Huizhou
City guide · 12 tours
A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
City guide · 12 tours
Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
City guide · 12 tours
The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Baiyangdian
City guide · 12 tours
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Qinhuangdao
City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Zhuhai
City guide · 12 tours
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Nanjing
City guide · 12 tours
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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