Xixi National Wetland Park

Xixi National Wetland Park, located in the western part of urban Hangzhou only a few kilometers from both the city center and West Lake, is a rare example of a protected wetland sitting inside a major metropolis. Its network of streams, ponds, reed beds, and villages preserves a landscape that has coexisted with the city for centuries and now serves as one of its most distinctive green spaces.

The wetland's history reaches back to the Han and Jin periods, flourished under the Tang and Song, peaked in the Ming and Qing, declined in the modern era, and was restored in recent decades as a protected park. In Hangzhou's traditional cultural geography, Xixi was grouped with West Lake and Xiling as the "three wests," a trio of landscapes that defined the city's western edge.

The park is organized around a set of ten named scenes and three dikes that structure the visitor experience. Scenes such as autumn reeds flying like snow, fishing villages in misty rain, and meeting plums along winding water capture the moods for which the wetland has been celebrated, and most are best appreciated from a small boat drifting through the branching waterways.

Xixi is unusual among Chinese wetlands for combining three identities at once: a city wetland, an agricultural wetland shaped by centuries of farming, and a cultural wetland layered with literary and folk associations. Its cultural essence is often summarized through its association with historic literati, local opera, and the folk traditions of the villages that once dotted its islands.

For travelers to Hangzhou, Xixi offers a quieter, more reflective counterpoint to West Lake, a protected wetland whose streams, villages, and seasonal scenes can be explored on foot or, most evocatively, by boat.