Amanyangyun serves an afternoon tea beside the lake at the center of its camphor forest, and it is the quietest hour the property sells. The service is called Chinese Afternoon Tea on The Lake, it runs year-round, and the setting does most of the work. Aman opens its restaurants to non-residents, so it is worth asking whether the lake service travels with that. The water sits in Minhang district, roughly 27 kilometers southwest of central Shanghai, ringed by ten thousand trees that were not standing here twenty years ago.

What the tea actually is

The format is a pot of freshly brewed tea and a tray of sweet and savoury bites built by the resort's head chef, taken at the water rather than in a dining room. Amanyangyun does not publish the menu, and it changes. Neither the tea nor the tray is long, and neither is meant to be. This is an hour of sitting still, not a tasting menu.

The thing to know before you write in is that the resort runs several teas and they are separate bookings, not variants of one. The lake service is the year-round one. There is also a boat tea, a canopy tea among the trees, and a daily tea ritual indoors, each on its own schedule. Aman publishes no rate for any of them and quotes on enquiry, so name the one you want.

The lake and what lives on it

A forest park borders the water, and the wildlife is the reason to look up between bites. Black swans work the surface. Rare birds hold the treeline. Rabbits cross the small island at the middle of the lake, close enough to watch from a table and far enough that none of it is tame. Birdsong is the ambient track and nothing is played over it.

Why there is a forest here at all

The trees are the point, and they are imported. In 2002 a reservoir project in Fuzhou, in Jiangxi province, put a valley of ancient camphors and a cluster of Ming and Qing dynasty houses in the path of rising water. Fuzhou-born entrepreneur Ma Dadong bought the problem and moved it. Over the following sixteen years, a team of botanists, engineers, architectural historians and craftsmen dismantled fifty historic villas stone by stone and lifted ten thousand trees, then carried all of it more than 700 kilometers northeast to the outskirts of Shanghai.

The largest camphor at the heart of the property weighs eighty tonnes. The big trees were stripped of branches and leaves, lifted with the trunk intact, and hauled north by road, with bridges reinforced and tunnels cut to give the cargo clearance. Roughly eighty percent of the ten thousand survived the move.

Kerry Hill Architects designed the resort around what arrived. Dan Pearson handled the landscape. The old houses were rebuilt as courtyard villas and suites, and twenty-four modern Ming Courtyard Suites were slotted into the grove between them. Amanyangyun opened in January 2018 as the fourth Aman in China and the first in Shanghai. Seeds still drop from the largest tree, and the resort now runs a seedling program that puts them in the hands of guests, mostly children, to grow on.

That history is what separates this from a hotel garden. The lake was engineered, but the canopy over it was not manufactured. It was carried here.

The rest of the tea programme

Floral Boat Afternoon Tea. Returns at the end of March. A wooden boat dressed with seasonal blooms is rowed slowly down the lake with pastries and tea aboard. It is the spring counterpart to the lakeside service and the one people photograph.

Afternoon Tea Among Nature. A canopy service set among the trees rather than at the water, with sweet and savoury plates taken under dappled forest light. Running through 31 October 2026.

Sunset Tea Ritual. Every evening at 6pm the Lounge shifts for a signature tea served as the light goes. It is the closest thing the resort has to a nightly ceremony that requires nothing of you. Running through 30 November 2026.

Bei TeaHouse and Nan Shufang. Bei TeaHouse is the dedicated tea room, built around brewing ritual and seasonal tastings rather than a pastry tray. Nan Shufang, named in homage to the royal reading pavilion in the Forbidden City, is the cultural building at the center of the property, fitted out in rare nanmu wood, with nine tea rooms where guests sit for tea ceremony alongside guqin, calligraphy, painting and incense practice. If you came for tea as a subject rather than tea as a view, this is the building you want.

Getting there and booking

Amanyangyun is at 6161 Yuanjiang Road, Maqiao, Minhang district. It is about 27 kilometers from central Shanghai, 24 kilometers south of Hongqiao airport, roughly 55 kilometers west of Pudong, and about 29 kilometers from Hongqiao railway station. Reservations go through the resort on +86 21 8011 9999. The restaurants are open to non-residents, which makes a half-day trip out of the city viable rather than a reason to book a room.

The rest of the dining is worth knowing about if you are already making the drive. Lazhu is the Chinese restaurant, seating 152 with seven private rooms, and it cooks Jiangxi food in tribute to the province the trees came from, alongside Shanghainese and Cantonese dishes. Arva is the lakeside Italian. Yinlu is a thirty-two seat hot pot room on the water built around high-grade seafood. The Lounge runs 10am to 8pm and pours rare spirits and cocktails alongside the tea, and there is a twenty-four seat cigar lounge stocked out of Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

The honest caveat

Not everyone loves it. The lake is a constructed waterway on flat ground, and the grounds read as designed rather than found, which is exactly what they are. If you want wilderness, this is not it. If you want an hour of quiet with black swans on a lake an hour from one of the loudest cities on earth, served properly and priced accordingly, it holds up.