Tracing the Huangpu to its source — where the river starts

Every visitor photographs the Huangpu at the Bund, where it is 400 m wide and lined with 1920s banks. Almost nobody goes to the other end, where it is two creeks meeting in a field.

The source is marked: the confluence of the Xietang and the Yuanyi, in Songjiang, officially the zero-kilometre point of the Huangpu. The route walks down from there through the marsh-field country that feeds it.

This is the most rewarding of the ten for a visitor with one day and no car, because the start is now on a railway station and the finish is a real river.

The shape of the walk

The published route runs along the Lanlu, Dazheng and Hengliao channels — the upstream water before it becomes a river — then picks up the old town of Liantang, the lotus marsh fields of Maodian village, and Dongxia village on what is signed as the most beautiful rural road in Shanghai.

It ends at the confluence. There is a marker. It is not a spectacle; it is a place where two pieces of water join and become the thing the city is built on.

What is on the way

Liantang old town, and the Sanlitang stretch of it. Maodian village, where the fields are lotus and fish ponds rather than rice. Dongxia village. The former residence of Chen Yun. Gulong temple. And the old green train at Shenyuan lake, which is a railway curiosity rather than a sight.

The route is about 24–26 km by bike and works as a three-hour walk if you are doing the section rather than the line.

Getting there

Liantang now has a station on the Husuhu rail line, which changes this from an awkward trip into a straightforward one. Check current train times before you go.

The other approach is Line 17 to Zhujiajiao or Oriental Land and then a bus or taxi west. That puts you in the water-town part of the route rather than the source end.

Getting there without a car

Line 17 to Zhujiajiao or Oriental Land, then bus or taxi; or the Husuhu rail line to Liantang station.

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

All countryside routes →