Where to Walk and Hike in Hangzhou
Honestly, Hangzhou isn’t a hiking destination first, it’s a lake and temple city with gentle terraced hills around the edges. That said, there’s genuine walking to be done, and one real hiking day trip if you have the time for it.
The Su and Bai causeways around West Lake
The flattest, easiest walk in the city, and free. Both causeways, the Su (built 1074) and the Bai (built roughly 250 years earlier, in 822), are pedestrian-only, bikes are banned on both, so it’s one of the few places in Hangzhou where walkers don’t have to share the path with cyclists or scooters. Plan on 2-3 hours to cover both at an unhurried pace, longer if you stop for the ticketed sights along the way.
Longjing and Meijiawu tea terraces
The hills around the Longjing and Meijiawu tea villages are walkable year-round, free to wander, and genuinely hilly rather than flat, with paths winding between the terraced tea rows. There’s no fixed trail system to follow, part of the appeal is picking a direction and following the terraces uphill until you’ve had enough, then turning back toward whichever village you started from.
Feilai Feng’s grounds, next to Lingyin Temple
The Feilai Feng grottoes sit in a forested, hilly plot next to Lingyin Temple, and walking the paths among the 300-plus rock carvings takes a couple of hours on its own if you go slowly. Since 1 December 2025 entry is free with a mandatory timed reservation booked through Alipay or WeChat, so build the walk into a full Lingyin Temple morning rather than a quick stop.
Xixi National Wetland Park
More boardwalk than hillside, but Xixi’s central zone (free) and its quieter east and west zones (~¥80 combined) offer several hours of walking through canals, reed beds, and old villages, a flatter, greener contrast to the tea hills.
The real hiking day trip: Moganshan
If you actually want a hike rather than a walk, Moganshan, about 1-1.5 hours from Hangzhou, is a bamboo-covered hill retreat with proper trails through the bamboo forest. It’s better suited to a slow overnight than a rushed day trip, since the appeal is the quiet pace as much as the terrain itself. See our day trips guide for the full logistics.
Read more: our nature spots guide covers the same areas from a scenery-and-wildlife angle, and the 4-day itinerary has room for a Xixi Wetland morning alongside the lake and tea villages.