Moganshan is a forested ridge in the hills between Hangzhou and Huzhou that has served as a retreat from summer heat since the late nineteenth century, when foreign missionaries and Shanghai businessmen built stone villas among the bamboo. The colonial-era architecture — dozens of stone houses with tile roofs and deep verandas — survives remarkably intact, tucked into the hillside along lanes that feel less like China than like a hill station in the Nilgiris. The temperature runs five degrees cooler than the cities below, which explains everything about the mountain's history.
The bamboo forests are the mountain's defining landscape, running up every slope and filling the air with the creak and rustle of culms thick as a man's forearm. A network of hiking trails connects the stone buildings and leads to small waterfalls and the Jianfeng summit viewpoint, and the fog that settles in most mornings gives the whole place a suitably melancholy atmosphere. The yellow bud tea grown on terraces just below the forest line is among the better teas in Zhejiang.
Moganshan has become fashionable again among urban Chinese and expats from Shanghai, and the accommodation reflects this: boutique hotels and upscale guesthouses have moved into the old villas, pricing out the backpackers who used to have the place to themselves. The mountain is best visited on a weekday, when the crowds from Shanghai thin out and the paths through the bamboo are quiet enough to hear the wind.