Hiking in Chinese: The Vocabulary You Need on the Trail

By Merry Mandarin Team · Published September 2, 2026 · 4 min read

Hiking vocabulary is one of the more oddly under-served corners of Mandarin study. Search for it and you mostly get restaurant menus, airport phrases, and shopping vocabulary, never the words for the thing millions of people in Taiwan and mainland China actually do every weekend: 爬山 (páshān), heading up a mountain on foot. This is the vocabulary for that, built around a short narrated story so the words have somewhere to live.

Watch the story first

The video below is 山中一日 (“A Day in the Mountains”), an HSK 3-level graded story, entirely in Mandarin, no English narration. It follows one hike from setting out in the morning to walking back down as the light changes. Watch it once for the story. Everything below is the vocabulary underneath it, organized so you can actually use it on your own hike, not just recognize it in this one.

What’s in your pack

Illustration of a backpack, the Chinese word 背包 (bèibāo) — 背包 bèibāo backpack

Illustration of a water bottle, the Chinese word 水瓶 (shuǐpíng) — 水瓶 shuǐpíng water bottle

Illustration of a camera, the Chinese word 相机 (xiàngjī) — 相机 xiàngjī camera

Illustration of hiking shoes, the Chinese word 登山鞋 (dēngshān xié) — 登山鞋 dēngshān xié hiking shoes

登山鞋 is worth noticing as a compound: 登山 (dēngshān) is the more formal word for mountain-climbing, the one that shows up on trail signs and gear labels, while 爬山 (páshān) is what people actually say when they tell a friend what they’re doing this weekend. Both mean the same thing. Reach for 爬山 in conversation and expect 登山 on equipment and maps.

On the trail

Illustration of a mountain, the Chinese word 山 (shān) — 山 shān mountain

Illustration of a path, the Chinese word 小路 (xiǎolù) — 小路 xiǎolù path, trail

Illustration of a bridge, the Chinese word 桥 (qiáo) — 桥 qiáo bridge

Illustration of a rock, the Chinese word 石头 (shítou) — 石头 shítou rock, stone

Illustration of a tree, the Chinese word 树 (shù) — 树 shù tree

Illustration of grass, the Chinese word 草 (cǎo) — 草 cǎo grass

Illustration of a mushroom, the Chinese word 蘑菇 (mógu) — 蘑菇 mógu mushroom

Wildlife you might actually see

None of these are zoo animals. A songbird, a rabbit, a deer at a distance, a few butterflies over a clearing: this is what shows up on an ordinary hike, and it’s exactly what the video’s story is built around.

Illustration of a bird, the Chinese word 鸟 (niǎo) — 鸟 niǎo bird

Illustration of a rabbit, the Chinese word 兔子 (tùzi) — 兔子 tùzi rabbit

Illustration of a deer, the Chinese word 鹿 (lù) — 鹿 lù deer

Illustration of a butterfly, the Chinese word 蝴蝶 (húdié) — 蝴蝶 húdié butterfly

Talking about the hike itself

The nouns above get you through naming what you see. These get you through actually describing the experience, which is the part most vocabulary lists skip entirely.

爬山

páshān

to hike, to climb a mountain: the everyday verb for the whole activity

上山

shàngshān

to go up the mountain, the climb itself

下山

xiàshān

to go down the mountain, the descent

休息

xiūxi

to rest, to take a break

累

lèi

tired

风景

fēngjǐng

scenery, the view

风景 is the word to reach for at the summit: 风景真好看 (fēngjǐng zhēn hǎokàn), “the view is really beautiful,” is a completely natural thing to say out loud to whoever hiked up with you, and a far more useful sentence than anything a phrasebook built for tourists in a city ever offers.

Using this after the video

Watch 山中一日 again with these words already in your head and the difference is immediate: the story is simple by design, HSK 3-level, and once 背包, 小路, and 鹿 aren’t new to you anymore, you’ll notice you’re reading the Chinese itself and only glancing at the subtitles when you actually need them. That’s the actual point of pairing a story with a vocabulary list like this: the words already have somewhere to live.

Merry Mandarin’s FSRS-5 review engine can drill every word on this page the same way it drills any other vocabulary, spaced out over the following days until 爬山 stops requiring translation and starts just meaning what it means. Free to try.