Zhāngjiājiè

Hunan, China

By Jace K

August 16^th, 2016

Zhāngjiājiè

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Zhāngjiājiè is incredible. It’s probably one of the most amazing places I’ve visited. Located in the Chinese province of Hunan, it was only relatively recently brought to public attention. By now the tourist operations are in full swing with over 20 million visitors a year, but for good reason.

We spent three days visiting the park and saw only a small part. It’s more or less split into two areas, the parts of the park at ‘ground’ level and the parts at the top of the plateau. The difference in hight between the valley floor and the plateau is around 350 metres. This made navigating a three dimensional activity and somewhat rough on the knees.

The first day we started late and took it fairly easy, choosing a nice walk along a stream that kept to the lower areas. The place was busy and we took our time. It was nice, albeit a little crowded.

The next day we started earlier on a route recommended to us by the owner of our hostel. This was a much better idea. It was drizzly and cool and unlike the day before, the area was completely deserted. The heavy, moss covered stone path gave the impression of something great, abandoned, something that we were lucky enough to rediscover ourselves. We made our way up, through the forest, slowly heading to the top of the peaks.

Hundreds of stairs passed. As we got higher the drizzle subsided and the forest became drier. We passed a couple of other hikers quietly taking photos at a lookout.

At the top the tourists suddenly reappeared and we ate lunch at McDonalds.

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And then somehow time got away from us. At some stage, between finishing lunch and passing the instant noodle vendors on the side of the path, things got rushed. We had about two hours to see the highlight of the park, descend hundreds of metres of stairs, and do half of yesterday’s walk to catch the last bus out of the park. Why does this sort of thing keep happening to us?

Every viewing platform was crowded with other tourists staring at their phones, adding their own faces to the scenery. We shoved through and frantically tried to take in the view. It was amazing, but extremely chaotic and there wasn’t enough time. Reluctantly we pushed on. With 90 minutes to go we reached the fork in the path where we could either take the stairs down, or rush back to the road and take a bus to the elevator that also went down to the valley. We stalled. If we didn’t take the elevator we knew we had at least an hour’s walk once we got to the bottom and the bottom was still several hundred metres below.

We grinned at each other and took off down the stairs.

And immediately stopped for five precious minutes to explain to a Ukrainian couple where they were and where they were going. They were coming up and planned to take the elevator down. They laughed and assured us they weren’t about to turn around and go down all those stairs they just came up. We smiled, wished them well, and bolted down.

Twenty-five minutes later we hit the bottom, and 40 minutes more brought us to the bus. On the bus was a tour group, everyone looking about as dazed as us. Their leader shouted at them through a loudspeaker the whole way back. God knows what he was saying. Any lingering serenity of the park was completely destroyed.

At this point I realised that I see these natural places as somehow sacred, the way religious people might see a church or temple or mosque. And so any behaviour that would be considered inappropriate in a church—shouting, spitting, using loudspeakers, etc.—I also see as inappropriate in a national park, especially one as glorious as this. This, more than any pile of rocks assembled by humans, is truly the cathedral of God.

Evidently the other visitors didn’t share my views.

That evening we went to a fancy restaurant also recommended to us by the owner of the hostel. We had the chicken soup, which wasn’t exactly as we imagined.

The next day we set out again, this time on another route. The beginning of this trail didn‘t look good. It was the most crowded we had seen so far, with dozens of tour groups, their leaders all with loudspeakers. We walked toward the trailhead and came to a large gate where it started. The other side of the gate was deserted. We looked around again. On one side, thousands of tourists, on the other, absolutely no one. So bizarre.

We walked through the gate and on, through more rainforest like scenery, this time with some conifers mixed in for good measure. The din of the other tourists faded as we walked until it was just us and the path. Eventually, up many stairs again, we came to the top of the park where we stopped for picnic lunch of a banana sandwich made with that particular sweet, vanilla flavoured bread that is so popular in Asia.

After lunch we walked a loop of the top, this time looking at the same karst pinnacles from the other side. We could hear the shouts and cries of the tour groups from across the chasm. On our side there was only us, a nice Chinese couple and one Asian backpacker wearing those strange toe-shoes and eating some kind of energy bar. Now we had time to really look.

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Afterwards, we went back down all the stairs, back to the trail by the stream where we had walked the previous days, and back to the bus stop. We took the bus out of the park into the town and looked for somewhere to eat dinner. This time we decided on tofu.