China Guide
Around Beijing
The Western Hills
The Western Hills are somewhere to escape urban life for a while. Thanks to their coolness in summer, they have long been favoured as a restful retreat by religious men and intellectuals, as well as politicians in modern times – Mao lived here briefly, and the Politburo assembles here in times of crisis. The hills are divided into three parks: the Botanical Gardens, Xiangshan Park and Badachu, all of them accessible by bus in under an hour from Beijing.
The nearest park to the city centre is the Botanical Gardens, 3.5km west of Beijing's Summer Palace, boasting two thousand varieties of trees and plants arranged in formal gardens; they're at their prettiest in summer. Two kilometres farther west, Xiangshan is the largest and most impressive of the three: a range of hills dominated by Incense Burner Peak in the western corner, it's at its best in the autumn (before the sharp November frosts), when the leaves turn red in a massive profusion of colour. Just as pretty is Badachu, its eight temples strung out along a hillside 10km south of Xiangshan.