The nine peaks and three lakes — Shanghai has mountains

Most visitors are told Shanghai is flat. It is not: there are twelve hills in Songjiang, and they are the reason the oldest settlement in the region is here rather than downtown.

The local formulation is "first there was Little Kunshan, then there was Songjiang prefecture" — Songjiang was the city before Shanghai was.

This is also the second-easiest of the ten to reach, because Line 9 runs straight to it from the centre.

The walk

The published line is about 40 km and takes in the hills, the lake country, and the villages between. There is a 13 km cultural loop that is the version to do if you have a morning: Tianma village, up Tianma hill, through the Wengbang pond-and-dike landscape, and finishing at Little Kunshan park.

At Little Kunshan are the Two Lu Thatched Hall and the Jiufeng temple — the pair of sites the saying is built on.

The leaning pagoda

On Tianma hill stands the Huzhu pagoda, built in 1079 in the Southern Song. It leans. It has leaned for a very long time and has not yet fallen, which is the sort of thing that makes a hill worth climbing.

There is also a radio telescope on Tianma, which is a strange and pleasing thing to find in rice-field country.

The satellite routes

Songjiang has more short routes than any other district in the network. The Tianma riding trail is about 12 km by bike. The Songjiang new-town green ring runs from the Zhangpu bridge church through the Baihuagang woodland.

If you want to try the network without committing a whole day, start here.

Getting there without a car

Line 9 to Sheshan or Dongjing — direct from the centre.

The honest part

This is one of the city’s official countryside routes, not a ShanghaiWalk route. Distances are as published.

✓ Tick off what you have walked

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