SingaBorcherts: China Trip

After our overnight train ride we were picked up at the train station by our guide “David”. We were whisked off to hike the nearby Tianzi mountain in the rain before making the hour-long drive to the ZhangJiaJie national park. "Tianzi" translates to "Heaven's Gate", and the most prominent feature of the mountain is an enormous archway hundreds of feet high. We took the cable car up to the top and hiked around (including on a glass-bottomed walkway cantilevered out over a cliff) and then took escalators down to the gate itself, where we were treated to a dense fog with about 20 feet of visibility. Mike hiked down 1000 steep wet steps, and the rest of the family took the final escalators. Tianzi Mountain joins the Great Wall on our list of “amazing Chinese heritage sights that we visited but didn't see."

The next day we visited the stone forest, the reason this remote location was on our itinerary at all. This region served as the inspiration and visual reference for the floating islands in Avatar (which we were reminded of by every souvenir stall). It was a sandstone ocean floor raised up by plate tectonics approximately 380 million years ago, and subsequently carved by rivers into a forest of enormous rock spires. It looked like the Needles in South Dakota, but at the scale of Monument Valley. We took the glass elevator up to the top and hiked around the rim of the most impressive region. Many great views, many monkeys.

A popular destination for domestic tourism.

Such scenery.

Much spire.

We occasionally snuck off the main tourist routes.

The postcard shot. Though it does not capture the way the wispy low clouds flowed around and through the rock formations.

There were more people taking pictures of monkeys fighting over stolen bags of food than of the scenery.

Fambly!

The height was hard to capture.

Eventually the sun came out!

There is a McDonalds at the top of a mountain. Not gonna lie, we totally ate lunch here and I have no regrets.

The national park was create in the 1980's as Wulingyuan Scenic Area, and the entire area was renamed to ZhangJiaJie in 1992 after a small town located within the park boundaries, which was itself named after Zhang Liang, a hero of the founding of the Western Han dynasty who settled there later in his life. There has been a little unrest as they’ve evicted farmers from within the national park which occasionally escalated to the military being called in. On one winding drive we had a conversation with our tour guide about relative national approaches to the idea of “eminent domain”.

On day 3 we drove to another part of the park to walk across a "Glass Bridge" that spans a large valley in the park. At 300 meters high the ground below was so far away as to not necessarily be recognizable as riverbed and forest. On the far side we hiked down many hundreds of stairs, through caves (including a bandit cave that had been populated by “noble” bandits ala Robin Hood and his merry men) and followed the river bottom to a dock where we took a boat back to the trailhead.

A big valley needs a big bridge

AAAAH! These cloth booties are the best!

Safety Last!

China is made of staircases.

This picture was taken as an excuse to rest Michael's wobbly legs.

An actual "living wall" that every office building in Singapore tries to emulate.

"How to freak out your tour guide in one easy step!"

Maxwell rides again!

Surprise Boat Ride. This one even had life jackets.

We wrapped up with a hike through the canyons at the foot of the stone forest, and saw the area from a different perspective. We also saw baby monkeys, and stumbled across the tomb of Zhang Liang where a bunch of kids were playing in the river.