Walking Towards The Fragrant Hills: Xiangshan Park

After a long time, I have travelled to Beijing City from the northern location where I live. Currently, China is enjoying its National Day Holiday season, and most of the tourist spots are overly crowded. Especially, the most popular spots such as the great wall, forbidden kingdom, summer palace and other places are really so crowdy. So, I am not travelling so many places like such places that can be overly crowded. Yesterday I have visited one of the most discrete place known as the Fragrant Hills area that is one of the farthest area from the city subway network in the western Beijing. I was shocked that being located at this far area, the place was also very crowded as the holiday season has 8 days of off work this time, up to the 8th of October.

The scenic area is known as the Xiangshan Park or also Fragrant Hills Park in English. The area is a vast area that is in the western part of the Beijing City. For a long time I was planning for travelling to this area but I could not get the perfect time but now it is the proper time for climbing mountains with lower temperature with comfortable weather. But the full autumn will be more colorful in this area in the early November.

Located in the western suburbs of Beijing, Fragrant Hills Park covers an area of 188 hectares and is an imperial garden featuring forests and hills. Built in the 26th year of Emperor Shizong of Jin Dynasty, it has a history of nearly 900 years. In the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, imperial palaces were built on the Fragrant Hills. Emperors would go here to hunt and beat the heat every summer and autumn. Among the well-known "Three Hills and Five Gardens" in the western Beijing, the Fragrant Hills Park is home to one of the hills (Fragrant Hill) and one of the gardens (Jingyi Garden). With a forest coverage of 96 percent, the Fragrant Hills Park boasts more than 5,800 ancient and famous trees, making it one of the areas with the highest concentration of negative oxygen ions, and a summer resort. The scenery of red leaves on the Fragrant Hills is famous both at home and abroad, becoming the greatest autumn scenery in Beijing.- Beijing Govt. Official Site

It is also very easier t go there by the special shuttle service from the city subway directly. The shuttle is the same that bring the tourists to the summer palace, National Botanical garden, and the Fragrant Hills is the last stoppage to that line. The cost for this special shuttle is only 4 RMB and takes less than half an hour to reach there.

After getting down from the subway station, the park entry gate is about 600 to 700 meter away and the only way to go there is the walking there. I have also started walking with the other people and I enjoyed that road that is so nice to explore. I could not think that the road will be so heavily crowded but the beauty of the street was amazing with hundreds of restaurants both side of the road. I think there will so many restaurants from every province of China.

I walked there with so many exciting vibes and I have taken some shots of this area. Then I entered the park gate area where I found the stone inscribed with the world Mountain Association. The ticket price of the park is also very cheap, it costs only 10 RMB. In this post I will only describe upto the entrance and I will take you to the deeper section of the park in coming blogs. There is a beautiful pond and many souvenir shops in the entry area.

I hope you like my photos of the beautiful walking streets of the Xiangshan Mountains Park area and and the festive vibes of this street. It was an amazing experience to explore such a fantastic place like this, with the discovery of such amazing place to explore in this area where I have enjoyed a great time with the park beauty. If you have any queries, let me know in the comments, and I will try my best to answer them.

Thanks a lot for your time and attention. I will catch up with you at the next one.

Wish you a great day!