Xixi Wetland

西溪 is a wetland inside the city rather than outside it, which is what makes it a different kind of walk from anything on the hills. The four routes here run on the same free public network: causeways, boardwalks and paved paths, all flat, all reachable from a metro platform, and all short enough to be abandoned halfway without a taxi problem. Distances are 2, 3, 6 and 10 km, and the longest of them is the only one that asks for more than half a day.

The organizing structure is three causeways and a list of views. 福堤, 绿堤 and 寿堤 run north-south through the free area, and the ten named 西溪 views sit along them and inside the paid ground beyond: 河渚街 and the 蒋村 market at the north end, the Qing 高庄 garden, the 曲水庵 nunnery site with its bronze bell, 清平山堂 as a Ming private publishing hall, and 洪钟别业 as the quiet corner most visitors walk past. The 中国湿地博物馆 at the 东岳站 end is the starting point of the 6 km loop and the reason that one reads as a door-to-door walk rather than a circuit.

The paid inner wetland is a separate question, and the honest answer is that it buys water rather than distance. The 80-yuan core is where the open ponds, the reed flats and the boat docks are, and it is worth it in the reed season and with children; it is not worth it as a way to lengthen a walk, because the free network already offers ten kilometres of it. The 137-metre underwater ecological corridor on the family loop is the one paid-feeling attraction that sits inside the free area, and it is glass-walled, short, and busy on weekends.

Getting in is easy from two directions: line 19 to 西溪湿地北站 at the north gate, and line 3 to 东岳站 at the museum end. That asymmetry is what makes the four routes work as one itinerary — a short morning loop out of the museum side, lunch and the lawn at the north end, and the 10 km grand loop left for a day with weather and no queue.