A swimming pool built on Moganshan in 1910 has been restored and is trading again, though not as a pool. It is a café, with the water back in it. Deqing News (德清新闻网) reported the reopening on 20 September 2026.
The pool and the old building beside it had both been sealed up for years. They have opened together, on a trial opening (试营业), which here means the place is serving customers but has not formally launched.
The Moganshan Administration (莫干山管理局), which also trades as the mountain’s culture and tourism group, did the restoration this year. It piped mountain spring water back into the pool so the water moves rather than stands, and brought in the team behind Bund No. 5 (外滩5号) in Shanghai to run the site as a café in the old building, with seating at the poolside. A reporter who went found clear water, coffee, kiln baked bread and visitors sitting at the edge. Staff said they had deliberately left the marks of age on the fabric, and had positioned some of the furnishings by reference to old photographs.
On the date, two sources agree. The administration’s surviving records, quoted by the county paper, put the pool at 1910 and call it the earliest public swimming pool in Zhejiang, used for competitions at the time. Shanghai Observer (上观新闻) dated an outdoor standard pool on Moganshan to the same year, in a piece from January 2025. The claim that it was the first in the province rests on the administration’s own archive and nothing beside it. The 1910 date is also earlier than the usual account of this mountain, including our own, which dates the spread of public pools here to the 1930s.
The report leaves out most of what you would want before setting out. There are no opening hours, no prices, no day the trial began, and nothing on whether anyone may swim. Dianping, the usual check that a place is really trading, answered with a verification wall.
The pool is inside the ticketed scenic area, so reaching it costs the price of admission. Three OR cafés opened lower down the mountain earlier this month.
What this means for a visitor: If you are already paying to enter the scenic area there is now somewhere to sit at the top, but the hours are not published, the prices are not published, and a trial opening can close again without notice.
Sources
- 德清新闻网 (Deqing News, reporter Chen Mingyue), , tier 2, dated regional or trade press. Read the original
- 上观新闻 (Shanghai Observer), , 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 21 September 2026 by Echo Peng. 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.