Deqing News (德清新闻网) reported on 17 September 2026 that the chestnut harvest has opened in the villages of Moganshan town (莫干山镇). Picking should hold until about 15 October.
The grove the paper visited sits deep in Gaofeng village (高峰村), where the trees are roughly seventy years old. Zhou Xudong (周旭东) leased it from the village in 2024, left the trees as he found them, added a reading area and some landscaping, and runs a cafe called Lilin (栗林咖啡) among them. He gave the paper the mid October end date, and said weekend footfall peaks at around 400 people a day, most of it from Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The grove covers about thirty mu, two hectares.
It is not one site but a scatter of them. Further down the hill road, the riding centre at Mengye Fairytale Horse Valley (梦也童话·马儿谷) opens its chestnut slopes to riders and to guests of the guesthouse attached to it, and has put chestnut chicken on the kitchen’s menu. Its founder said bookings for the two holidays are already in. At Fangcunwu in Hecun village (何村村方村坞) a cafe stands among the tea terraces, and anyone who buys a drink walks into the grove beside it at no charge. Xiangyuehu (象月湖国际休闲度假谷) runs the picking as a guided session, with an outdoor instructor taking families in. Two more guesthouses, Guiyu Shanju (归欤山居) and Jingmi Shanju (静谧山居), have chestnut trees in a courtyard and chestnut woods on the slopes around them.
None of this is a public arrangement, which is the part to understand before going. The paper names private businesses. No price, opening time or booking number appears anywhere in the report, and no grove in it is a ticketed attraction: what each place sells is a coffee, a bed or a riding lesson, with the picking attached. That also makes it one of the few autumn things here that costs nothing extra once you have arrived.
The timing is the awkward part. The picking window covers the Mid-Autumn holiday from 25 September and then the National Day holiday from 1 October, the two busiest stretches of the Moganshan autumn.
What this means for a visitor: If you are on the mountain between now and the middle of October, chestnut picking is a cheap half day that needs no scenic area ticket. The same weeks are the busiest of the autumn, so book a guesthouse table rather than turning up for lunch.
Sources
- 德清新闻网 (Deqing News, reporter Xu Shengyu), , tier 2, dated regional or trade press. Read the original
Tiers follow the site's source rules: the county portal, the scenic area's own channel and the statistics bureaus are the record; regional and trade press are dated fact; anything promotional is a tip until confirmed.
Last checked 17 September 2026 by Liyan Ye. Prices, timetables and entry rules on this mountain move without notice, so confirm anything you are booking around.
Photographs on this site are representative illustrations, not documentary images of the specific building, property or service described.