You can hear it before the path turns. The sound arrives through the trees as a low continuous roar that gets louder for two or three minutes and then, quite suddenly, is coming from everywhere at once, because you have walked into the spray zone. The fall comes off a lip of rock about ten metres up and hits a boulder shelf in the middle with the force of something industrial, splits into two white ropes, and lands in a green plunge pool that is very obviously cold. Everything within twenty metres is soaked and covered in moss: the rocks black and slippery, the boulders upholstered in green, the ferns hanging off the cliff faces dripping. This is 太平山瀑布 Tàipíngshān pùbù, the waterfall of Peaceful Mountain, six kilometres north-east of downtown 五指山市 Wǔzhǐshān Shì, and it is the most convenient piece of wilderness on the island — a genuine jungle torrent that you can reach from a city street in fifteen minutes by car.
太平山 Tàipíngshān is not a single summit but a wooded hill of about eight hundred metres, standing over the city’s north-eastern edge, and it is what protects the town from the worst of the north-east wind in winter. The mountain is known for two things: the tangle of old vines and the odd shapes of its exposed rock, both of which the fall is set in, and the water supply of the city, which comes off the same slope. In the dry months the fall drops to a couple of threads and the plunge pool clears enough to wade in; in the wet season, from May to October, a single night of rain turns it into the version everyone photographs, a hard white column hitting rock with enough noise to make conversation impossible. Between the two extremes there is a middling state, a week or so after heavy rain, when the volume is impressive, the surrounding forest is glossy, and the water in the pool is at its most absurd shade of green.
Above the falls the hillside continues, and a path carries on up the valley past a reservoir that supplies the city; it is a good walk in its own right and almost nobody does it, because most visitors stop at the water and go back down. Below and around the fall the valley has been developed in a low-key way that is typical of the mountain’s outskirts — a resort complex tucked into the trees on the far bank of the stream, gardens, and a service road. It is worth knowing that this is a hillside people use rather than a fenced attraction: local families come up at weekends with a thermos and a mat, and elderly residents of the city walk the road for exercise in the early morning.
Practicalities
Tickets. There is no ticket office at the falls and no admission charge for the path up to the water; the hillside is public land, and the resort complex on the far bank is a private business you are not obliged to enter. If a gate is manned at the lower road, it is there to keep vehicles off the walking path rather than to sell you anything.
Opening hours. Day use only, effectively from first light to dusk; the valley has no lighting and the rocks around the pool are treacherous in the dark. Early morning, before nine, is when the light reaches into the gorge and the spray catches it.
Closing day. There is no closing day, though the path can be closed after heavy rain or during typhoon warnings, when the stream rises fast and the rock shelf gets genuinely dangerous. Check the weather the day before rather than the morning of, and do not walk the gorge in a rainstorm, no matter how short the walk.
Getting there. The falls are about six kilometres north-east of the centre of 五指山市 Wǔzhǐshān Shì, a fifteen-minute drive on the 太平山 Tàipíngshān road; a taxi from the middle of town costs around ¥25 to ¥35. The city’s own 翡翠公园 Fěicuì Gōngyuán is on the same side of town and can be combined with it, and the walk back down into the city, if you have the time, takes about an hour and a half on the road.
flowcloud would say that a waterfall this close to a provincial town is a piece of luck, and that the correct way to enjoy it is to arrive before the sun does and leave when the first coach appears.
Getting there: wear shoes that can get wet and grip on wet stone, take a dry bag for the phone, and give it forty minutes rather than fifteen. Stand upwind of the pool if you want a photograph without spray on the lens, and go up the valley path afterwards if the water has not already made your decision for you.