I
arrived in Zhangjiajie city Sunday night after a 6.5-hour train ride. According
to the Internet site, it was supposed to be only 5 hours. So I was more than
ready to arrive. I was greeted by Grace, my guide for the next several days. I
had decided to book a guide and tour to maximize my time in the area so I could
see all the highlights. Grace is a pleasant young woman who has been a guide
for two years. She and the driver delivered me to my hotel. Then I went out to
find a place to eat, which was not easy in that area of the city. After walking
around the block, I saw a man on the street cooking fried rice. He also had
noodles, which looked pretty good. So I ordered fried noodles and took them
back to my room.
Monday
morning Grace and the driver picked me up at 7:00 to go to Zhangjiajie National
Park. It is the first national park in China, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site,
and is the location of the scenery used in Avatar. Since I was spending the
next two nights in a village on top of the mountain, we left my big bag at a
restaurant near the park entrance to be carried up later. Someone from the
company picked it up and it was delivered to my room at about 6:00.
For the next
2.5 hours we walked along Golden Whip Stream, which is a 6 km walk. It’s a
lovely walk through a forest along the stream with occasional views of the rock
peaks the park is known for.
In one area there are trees that are a species of
sequoia. They have tall, straight, red trunks but the leaves are different from
the ones in the U.S. Since it’s in the forest along the stream, it was a
pleasantly cool walk. The stream is named after a rock formation that is called
the Golden Whip because when the sun shines on it, it is golden.
When we
passed a rock overhang with sticks between the ground and the rock, such as
I’ve seen many places, Grace explained that the sticks have two purposes: old
people put them there so they won’t have back problems, and young people put
them there so they will find a mentor to help them in their profession. I
hadn’t heard those explanations before.
Next
was elevator up to the top. It’s the world’s highest elevator and ascends 360
meters in 1:58, just under two minutes. The alternative is to walk up, which I
learned later takes about four hours. The lift was included in my tour; so
that’s what we did.
Since this is the peak season, I had been told that the
wait in line would be one to two hours. It was an hour and a half. This was, of
course, a Chinese-style line, meaning it was a mass of people pushing together
most of the time. Knowing the wait would be long, I had taken my Kindle along.
At one point, the crowd was so dense that I could hardly hold it in front of me
to read. Then I think people noticed that I was reading and I was given a
little more space. But when the line/mass moved, every ten minutes, there was a
push to move farther ahead. We went up and then turned and went up more. Then
we entered a very long tunnel. Eventually the mass was channeled and divided
into three lines, which means the mass was only two people across.
Finally, we
got to the elevators. I was really lucky and was at the front of the line at
that point. That meant that when we got into the elevator, I was up front
against the glass. When it lifted above the cement shaft, we had our first view
of the magnificent scenery and were at eye level as we ascended. I met Grace at
the top. As a guide, she could go through the special channel and didn’t have
to wait in line; she just had to wait for me. When I was in the tunnel, she
found me and said she’d stay with me. Since I knew she was very tired and
didn’t need her with me, I sent her on ahead so she could rest a bit.
Altitude
at the top of the mountain is 1300 meters/4265 feet. I did well with that and
had no problems walking around.
When I
reconnected with Grace and took a few photos, she told me that that wasn’t the
scenic area. Could have fooled me—and a bunch of others. We walked along the
scenic area path for an hour and a half. It was truly magnificent. There are a
number of scenic viewpoints where people went to take photos. After the initial
crowd from the elevator spread out, these were the only places that were
crowded. I let Grace take photos of me at a few of them. One would have been
adequate, but the Chinese like to have a photo everywhere; so I let her do
that.
Two of the viewpoints had models of Avatar characters: a green man and a bird.
People could pay to stand next to them for a special photo. I didn’t do that. The
names of some of the formations have been changed to those used in the movie.
One
pavilion has lanterns made from business cards left by South Korean tourists.
Grace said they are the largest group of foreign tourists. Zhangjiajie is so
popular among South Koreans that there are direct flights from Seoul during the
peak season.
I
really like rock formations in general; so I loved these. Although they are
different, they reminded me of Bryce and Zion. Bryce is one of my favorite places—looking
up at the huge formations in Zion and looking down from above and up from below
at the numerous formations in Bryce. I did both in Zhangjiajie.
As the
afternoon went on, it was apparent that Grace was not feeling well and was
fading. She finally admitted that she wasn’t only tired but she had a headache
and stomachache. After delivering me to my hotel, she went back to town to go
to the hospital to see a doctor. She was told to stay home and rest for at
least two days.
Before
Grace left, I asked if there was a place to take a walk in the evening,
thinking I’d rest in the room for a couple hours and then take a walk. She told
me about the Great Sightseeing Platform and then insisted on walking me there,
since it was only twenty minutes away. She could have drawn a diagram, as it
was a straightforward route, but she felt responsible for making sure I got
there and knew the way back. Since I was there, I stayed. After a few minutes,
it started to rain. We had heard thunder and noticed rain in the distance. It
rained lightly for half an hour. This was the first rain in the area for over
40 days. Grace had shown me a picture of dried corn stalks due to the drought.
I’d seen some from the train but hadn’t realized that they were dried out
because of the lack of rain.
When
the rain stopped, I walked to another scenic view down—and back up—many steps.
Then it was sunset time. I sat at the top and watched the shadows going up the
rocks for a while. It was lovely and relaxing.
Back in
the village, I stopped at a small place to eat before returning to my room.
When I was looking at a woman cooking and thinking about eating there, a young
woman came up and spoke English clearly and told me they have an English menu.
So, of course, I had to stay. She is a university student who had just finished
her first year of studying medicine. Another young woman joined us who had just
finished her first year studying nursing. I enjoyed chatting with both of them.
Tuesday
morning I woke up early and decided to walk back to the Great Sightseeing
Platform, which is described as the best place for viewing the sunrise. It was
6:50; so I knew that the sun was close to rising above the mountain, but it was
late for the actual sunrise. When I arrived and sat on the wall, the woman who
sells fruit there greeted me and gave me a plum. She indicated that the sun
would come out soon. (It was behind a big cloud. I went down a little lower to
a place I’d picked out Monday night and sat on the steps to watch the sun
appear. One of the first viewpoints on Monday was Lose Yourself, named because
you can lose yourself when you look at the view. However, it was difficult to
lose oneself when juggling among the crowd for a viewing position. But sitting
alone on the steps, it was easy to lose myself in the quiet and beauty.
When I
returned to the guesthouse, I ate breakfast and waited for Sunny, my new guide.
Sunny will graduate from university next year with a major in English. She
hopes to be an interpreter; her second choice is tour guide. She is a pleasant
young woman, and I enjoyed the day with her. Her boyfriend is a classical
Chinese painter. He wants to go to graduate school but did not do well on the
English part of the entrance exam. Not that English is important for a
classical Chinese painter. He eventually wants to teach painting.
At
9:00, we left for our destination for the day: the Yangjiajie section of the
park. It’s a large area in a different part of the mountaintop than we were on
on Monday. Sunny said we were going to Wulong Village, which is one sector of
Yangjiajie. It was named for a village in the TV serial Journey to the West, a
classic Chinese tale about a monkey, a monk, and pig going on a journey.
We visited
several viewpoints, some of which were an hour apart.
In one
place, the path went up a narrow rock staircase between two cliffs. It was a
one-way path, as people had to go single file. The path down was so narrow that
we barely fit across it.
We went
up two rock peaks by strong metal ladders attached to the rocks. They went
pretty much straight up. They were very firm and not as bad to climb as they
looked from a distance.
The second one was called One Step to the Heaven. I
think it means that you are closer to heaven from the top of the peak. But I
couldn’t help thinking that one misstep over the side would put one in heaven.
The areas were very well fenced; so it would be difficult to have such a
misstep.
We
encountered a few monkeys along the way. One was sitting next to a rest area
where food is readily available. A girl walking to the area dropped her plastic
bag and the monkey immediately walked over and picked it up. A young man made a
lot of noise and waved his hat, and the monkey dropped the bag and left. Another
monkey was next to the path near a viewpoint. It became a little aggressive
toward a boy taking its photo from a good distance, like the one in Malaysia
did to me last year.
In some
places in the forest we could hear a lot of cicadas. They were especially loud
in the last section we walked through on the way out. When we emerged from the
forest after being surrounded by the sound, it seemed eerily silent.
It was
a very hot day again. With the walking up and down all day and the heat, I was
ready for a rest when we returned to the guesthouse at 3:30. A shower would
have been nice, but the water in the village was turned off most of the time
due to the water shortage resulting from the drought. Tuesday we had water from
6:00 to 9:00 PM; Wednesday there was water only from 6:00 till 8:00. There was
a bucket in the bathroom to hold water for the rest of the day.
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