It’s foggy up in the mountains of Zhangjiajie. It’s midday, but the sun remains obscured and faint, glowing mildly in the cold air looking to the world no brighter than the moon.
I was pretty stoked to be finally here - Zhangjiajie is one of China’s greatest landscapes. The forests of sandstone pillars: tall slender columns that rose from the earth into the clouds. There’s nothing else quite like it in the world.
The days that we spent in Zhangjiajie National Forest weren’t quite the nature retreat that I was envisioning. The views are splendid, but we were walking on pavements and concrete. There are clean toilets along the way, and shops selling food and knick-knacks could be found at regular intervals. A variety of lifts, cable cars and even buses run throughout the mountains. We did nothing more exertional than clambering into and out of the shutter buses during our time here.
If there’s any fault in the trip, it’s only because everything seemed a little too curated. This is the spot where you get off and see these three things, and you can board back onto the shutter bus for the next stop to see these two things… No matter how beautiful the sights, or how well-organised the trip is, perhaps we all need a bit of surprise and spontaneity in our lives.
Still, it’s hard not to be impressed by the clear glass bridges extending across the mountain ranges, or the miles of winding roads laid up and down the mountain ranges. You can see the tip of the trees many miles below you as you walk, and rivers winding through the rocks and the trees.
It’s not just scenery to be enjoyed here. It wasn’t on my bingo card to descend the mountaintop via kilometers of metal slides (fun!) and ziplining through the treetops of Zhangjiajie, but that was quite a joyful hour or two. And of course, there are glass elevators to take you back up to the top again, if you like.
天门山 (Tianmen Cave, translating to "Heaven's Gate”), is another attraction in the area. It’s a rock arch that faces the open sky, and visitors can climb the steps in order to walk through the arch. It’s perhaps about 30 minutes climb, and it was tolerable in the cold air. For non-masochists, you can probably skip the steps and take the escalator up.
And for that bit of spontaneity that I'd been searching for: we found families of monkeys at the top of the mountains.
Another area is Baofeng Lake Scenic Area, where we took a boat around the reservoir. Performers in folksy costumes sing verses of their traditional songs as our boat passed by their lake houses. A fisherman on his bamboo boat showed us how his flock of trained cormorants - dark-feathered diving birds - hunt for fishes underwater. (The fishes that the birds brought up from the waters were suspiciously limp, but I appreciate the effort).
The Tujia people are the ethnic minority of the region, and the Zhangjiajie Tusi Imperial City was a palace built by the tribe in the 18th century.
Zhangjiajie is located in Hunan province, and the local fiery cuisine paired well with the cold weather. Mao Zedong, a Hunan native, famously sprinkles chili powder over his watermelon slices. As a pithy saying goes: 四川人辣不怕，湖南人怕不辣。(Sichuan natives are unafraid of spicy food, but Hunan natives are afraid of non-spicy food.) As we approached each mealtime, the restaurants that our group patronised had to be warned ahead of time that we are non-locals, and to tame down the spices. The food that we were given were humorously termed “Guangzhou spicy 广州辣”, a nod to that region’s famous intolerance of spiciness.
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| We see their version of stinky tofu on food carts and stalls almost everywhere we go - it’s black, and surprisingly mild in taste. |
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| Local air-dried preserved meats, and noodles |
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| Just LOOK at this baby carrier. 10/10 for style. |
We also stopped by the regional attractions of Fenghuang Ancient Town and Furong Village, which features waterside stilted buildings. Furong Village in particular, was built over a waterfall. They were lovely in the daytime, and gorgeous when illuminated in the night.
One night, we went to the 湖南省歌舞剧院 (Hunan Opera and Dance Theatre) in the city. They were genuinely terrific with their acrobatic feats and stunts with fire shows, balancing acts and throwing knives.
Chinese humour is quite an acquired taste. It was six years ago and in another part of China when I heard one of the funniest thing that I’d heard of in my life, as an off-the-cuff comment to bargain an item down. There were a few bangers throughout our trip, many from our tour guide who spoke for hours in a monologue not unalike a standup comedy routine. (In one part of her monologue, she summarised the war between two titans in China’s historical Three Warring States as “刘备和曹操 要PK。”) On another occasion, as we were walking by a roadside flea market, she commented that the antiques that we were passing by were from the Zhou Dynasty. Which 'Zhou', you ask? “上周 （last week)”.
I’m enamoured with sake, and I didn’t have much hope when we got this bottle of Chinese rice wine (土家原味米酒) with our dinner, but we were surprised: it was smooth and enjoyable. I spent the next three days looking for more in every liquor store that we passed by, but to no avail.
Being in China, we also drank plenty of bubble tea. 茶顔悦色 (Modern China Tea Shop) is the most popular chain. We also really enjoyed 茶理宜世（Charlie's Tea), which stores we came across in the train stations when we took the high-speed trains. Just like the Shinkansen in Japan, these ones were just as fast and as comfortable. We sped through vast distances over just a couple of hours, a journey that would have taken even longer by flight. Within the city, a variety of electric cars ply the roads. Petrol vehicles are by far the minority, and you can identify them by a blue license plate (in contrast to the green license plates held by EVs and hybrids).
Even as we visited the rural areas in China, it already felt like we're stepping into the future.
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