Zhangjiajie National Forest Park

Some landscapes look like the work of a god with too much imagination. Zhangjiajie’s sandstone pillars — three thousand of them, some rising three hundred metres out of the forest canopy — look like the work of a god who got tired of making mountains the usual way and started stacking stone columns instead, leaving gaps of cloud between them. When Avatar needed a floating world, its designers came here and copied what they saw.

The Park That Made the Movies Jealous

The pillars are what is left of a 380-million-year-old seabed, worn by time into columns so abrupt that each one has its own weather. At dawn the mist sits between them like water in a tray, and the peaks become islands. Tourists call the two most famous ones Avatar Hallelujah Mountain and the First Bridge Under Heaven; the locals call them by names that are older and less impressed.

The park is enormous — two parks, really, plus the Yuanjiajie and Yangjiajie sections — so there is no way to see all of it in a day, and there is no way to see enough of it either. Take the cableway up to the Yuanjiajie platform at first light, walk the loop above the peaks, and save the golden afternoon for the 金鞭溪 (Golden Whip Stream), the valley floor where the pillars lean over the water like tall neighbours gossiping.

Practicalities

• Tickets: ~225 RMB, valid four days, includes the eco-shuttle within the park; cableways and the Bailong elevator are separate.
• Getting there: Zhangjiajie has an airport and a high-speed rail station; the park’s Wulingyuan gate is 45 minutes from town by shuttle.
• Best time: autumn, when the haze clears, or a rainy day in summer, when the mist is doing its best work.
• Stay: a cliff-view homestay near the Wulingyuan gate so you can be first up the mountain — see the Stay section.

flowcloud would say that Zhangjiajie is the one place where the photographs are not exaggerated — they are merely incomplete, because no camera has yet learned to convey what it feels like to stand above a sea of stone and cloud and hear your own breathing as the loudest thing in the world.

Getting there: HSR or plane to Zhangjiajie, shuttle to Wulingyuan ticket gate. Go early, take the cableway, walk slowly — the pillars have been waiting, and they are in no hurry.