Discover Suzhou
Tiger Hill
虎丘
A wooded hill topped by a 1,000-year-old brick pagoda that leans noticeably off vertical - Suzhou's Leaning Tower. Beneath it lies the supposed tomb of King Helu of Wu, guarded by the Sword Pool gorge.
The story
What makes this place special
Tiger Hill is a low hill of about 30 metres in a park of some 20 hectares, and tradition holds that King Helü of Wu was buried here in the fifth century BC - the name comes from a story that a white tiger was seen crouching on the hill three days after the burial. None of that is archaeologically confirmed. Yunyan Temple was founded on the hill in 327 and was favoured under the Song; it was last substantially repaired in 1871 after Taiping Rebellion damage and then abandoned after the wars of the 1930s and 40s. An attempt to excavate the supposed tomb in the 1950s was abandoned when the diggers found they were undermining the pagoda's foundations.
What you’ll discover
The route climbs a stone-flagged path from the gate past the Sword-Testing Rock and up to Thousand Person Rock, a broad stone plaza tied to the legend that Helü's son had around a thousand tomb-builders killed to keep the location secret. Just above it is Sword Pool, a narrow rock-walled cleft said to hold three thousand swords and to sit above the tomb, and at the top the brick Yunyan Pagoda - seven storeys, leaning more than two metres out of true, which is why locals call it the second leaning tower in the world. The lower park holds the Wanjing Villa penjing collection of several hundred trees, plus steles, the small Mahavira and Heavenly Kings halls and the tomb of the courtesan Zhen Niang.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Go up the main stone path and come down the back way. The eastern/rear descent through the gardens and the bonsai collection is quiet, shaded and nearly empty, while everyone else goes up and down the same stairs.
- The pagoda cannot be climbed and has not been climbable for years - it is structurally propped. People budget time to go up it and there is nothing to go up.
- Sword Pool is the one spot that genuinely disappoints people who have read the legend: it is a small dark cleft in the rock, not a pool with anything in it. Read the story first and it becomes interesting; arrive expecting a sight and it will not land.
- The penjing collection is the best thing in the park after the pagoda and most visitors never find it, because it is off to the side rather than on the summit route.
- Combine it with Shantang Street. Tiger Hill sits at the far end of the old Shantang canal, and the canal boat down to Shantang Street is a better way back into the city than the bus.
When to come
Morning, and early in spring when the hill's plum and cherry are out; this is a traditional local spring outing so weekends in blossom season are very busy. Late afternoon light suits the pagoda for photographs.
Getting around
Poor above the lower park. The climb to Thousand Person Rock, Sword Pool and the pagoda is a continuous sequence of uneven stone steps with no lift and no alternative route - a wheelchair cannot reach the summit and a bad knee will find the descent harder than the climb. The lower park, the entrance gardens and the penjing collection are flat and paved and are worth doing on their own. Electric carts run on the park's internal roads but do not solve the summit.
Worth knowing before you go
Walk in along Shantang Street from the Metro rather than taking a taxi to the gate - the canal approach is half the experience, and it is free.
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