Zhangjajie

It seems everyone in China has heard of this magical place. It is indeed a unique and beautiful place of natural wonder but there are some negative aspects that really impacted my perceptions of this place.

This 4,810 ha (11,900 acres) national park is widely considered to be the inspiration behind the floating Hallelujah Mountains in the film Avatar and it isn’t hard to see the resemblance when low clouds roll in and blanket the bottom of the stone pillars.

An entry ticket gives you four consecutive days in the park and I booked my hostel in Wulingyuan, out outside the park’s southeast entrance.  The first day was warm but cloudy, the second day was hot and sunny, and my last two were cold and rainy so I ended up experiencing a mix of seasons.

Navigating the park isn’t very easy but I managed to eventually get where I needed to go.  You could probably just find your way by listening for the frequent squawking of megaphones and shrill echoes of people yelling in the valleys but I was looking for some lesser known areas.

The tourist maps are all generalized illustrations that leave out the detailed reference points I was looking for so I instead referenced the more detailed maps found in specific locations in the park.   There is a lot of discrepancy between the maps and the English names of locations differs even more than the layout of the map.  I moved quickly so I managed to cover the majority of the paths in the first two days but there were some trails that I couldn’t locate, even after asking workers.

Although this is another of Unesco’s world heritage sites, this park is just like every other scenic destination in China.  It is a business.  A business focused on profits and that means catering to the mass tourists that storm the park are comfortable paying high fees to get to the best viewpoints with as little effort as possible.

Fortunately for me, this means that the paths that require effort to go up or down don’t have much traffic until you reach the top where bus after bus unloads crowds of Chinese tourists that make it almost impossible to cross through without nudging people out of the way.  I was slithering my way through crowds of Chinese people like they were standing still because, in most cases, they were. Ugh!

I did find some unmarked paths that led to some incredible viewpoints but I failed to find some trails that are on the large map in the park that lead to waterfalls.  Those trails are now abandoned and it any trace of them still exist, merchant structures have now blocked them off.

One of my favorite trails was the Yaozi area trail in the southwest corner of the park that was closed due to heavy rain.  It was also raining the day I hiked up that trail but it really felt like the Avatar mountains at that point because you cross over the summits of a couple pillars and all you can see around you at that height is clouds. The signs at the entrance barricades say the trail is closed while they repair it but the sign is dated July 2016 and the state of decay of buildings and structures along the trail indicate they have no plans to renovate anything.  The trail itself needs some stone replaced in a few sections but is still in good shape and it leads up to one of the tallest and most remote places in the park that gives you great vantage points from several different directions.

Fixing the path wouldn’t make much sense economically though when the park can instead focus efforts on catering to the lazy tourists like construction of the more recent Bailong Elevator and expanding commercial options at the top of Tianzi mountain next to the massive McDonalds.

The sad part is that this is having a negative impact on the rest of the park.  I feel so disgusted by people when I’m standing there trying to take a picture and I get shoved by others trying to squeeze in, only to catch a glance of people just casually dropping their wrappers or water bottles over the edge of the mountain.  On the trails I witnessed people dropping garbage everywhere, even right beside the numerous garbage and recycling bins everywhere along the trails.  I’m speechless as to how to explain such laziness.

Some of the trails I’ve wandered down just ended up being places to stash garbage out of sight and some steep slopes were just convenient places to dump all sorts of non-disposable items.  A couple of the villages in the park had so much trash around that they almost appeared to be constructed of it.

In most of these scenic areas, there is a large workforce of people that spend all day going up and down the stairs to sweep and clean up garbage.  It is depressing that these jobs are even required and plenty of trash gets missed.  I sure hope this extreme laziness isn’t a strategy to create jobs because it is a very poor attempt and creates very bad habits.  This behaviour finally helps me understand why I see Chinese people litter when they hike trails in Canada but Canada doesn’t have the resources to send staff to constantly clean up garbage, nor should we have to.

Despite these disappointing realizations, this is still a must-see destination in China and I struggle to imagine how mountains can erode in such a manner that it creates so many of these fascinating stone pillars.  It was also a good time to visit because the last few weeks in China have brought out much more color and lushness and the trees in Zhangjajie are now blooming in white, pink, and yellow with the rains also helping to keep the streams and rivers flowing strongly.

Leaving Wulingyuan to go back to Zhangjajie city was an odd experience.  I went through the usual confusing routine of trying to figure out which bus to hop on to but, shortly after it left, it pulled over just 100m away.  Two police officers stepped on.  Obviously I couldn’t understand what they were saying but what caught my attention was the officer next to me holding his firearm and sort of waving his arm downward while his finger was on the trigger.  He clearly wasn’t paying attention to where the gun was pointed and I couldn’t tell if the safety was off or not.  The officers quickly moved through the bus looking at Chinese ID cards so I’m assuming they were looking for a Chinese male that was trying to flee.

Zhangjajie City is home to some other famous nearby scenic areas but there is one that towers in the distance.  Tianmen Mountain is a popular destination accessible by a 30 minute ride in a cable car from the city.  Partial cloud cover and icy shards left behind from a chilly morning mist made this an interesting place to visit.  I followed the path constructed along the nearly vertical cliffs around the mountain and, like Zhangjajie national forest in the rain, it was like walking through the clouds with panoramic views where the skies clear.

The ride down was by bus but just as enjoyable as the cable car.  The buses coast down a narrow road carved along the slope that passes by waterfalls and through many tunnels.  The 99-turn road gets its name from obvious reasons.