Immortal Zhangjiajie
Wulingyuan is most noted for its large volume and variety of quartz sandstone pillars, the view of which is different from every angle you approach them. If you hanker after grand panoramas, you can climb higher to Huangshizhai and Yuanjiajie scenic spots. If you long for a secluded walk, you can meander along the Jinbian Creek and through the Shadao Valley. If you seek thrills and a sense of adventure, you can go to Yaozizai, where the high cliffs will offer you frightening but exhilarating sights.
Preferring more relaxed activities, I chose to take a peaceful trip along the Jinbian Creek. This murmuring river winds along the woods, with some smooth, silent sections and others whose rapids bound into the air as they hit boulders. There is neither underground river nor reservoir to supplement the river, but it never dries up in drought and never becomes turbid during the rainy season. This is because the nearby plantations sustain the water. The mountain nurtures the trees and the trees support the creek. Hidden deep in the forest, the Jinbian Creek is under the care of mother nature.
Though celestial pillars are Zhangjiajie's most obvious characteristic, it is also full of beautiful waters like Jinbian Creek. Streams and rivers hug each peak and on the mountains there are calm bodies of water. There you can take a boat and follow a river downstream or drift across one of its placid lakes, where deep blue, crystal green and pale yellow meet your gaze as you glance down to admire their beauty.
Gateway to Heaven
Standing at 1518.6 meters, Tianmen is the highest mountain around Zhangjiajie City. It is best known for the Tianmen Cave that cuts right through the mountain. The hole was formed when a huge portion of the cliff fell down in AD 263 during the Three Kingdoms Period. It was then that it became known as Tianmen, literally Heavenly Gate, Mountain, a name bestowed on it by Sun Xiu, ruler of the state of Eastern Wu, as he believed the phenomenon to be highly auspicious. As the weather and light changes travelers are treated to magnificent shows as clusters of clouds ascend and float through the gaping hole or the sun sends shards of light across the valley.
Tianmen Mountain’s beauty is not its only draw, as there are some mysterious qualities that fascinate visitors, and yet remain to be solved. Locals claim that, over the years, they have watched the Heavenly Gate keep gradually change its direction. Another mystery is that the left wall of the cave remains dry even during the heaviest of rainstorms, but in the dry season it may suddenly spout torrents of water, seemingly coming from nowhere, that form a magnificant and sonorous waterfall whose drop is even higher than Venezuela’s Angel Falls, recorded as the highest in the world. This wonder occurs rarely and lasts just 15 to 45 minutes, so whenever it appears people of the entire city flood to the mountain to witness it.
A more permanent feature of the Heavenly Gate is the Ling Spring, whose water shivers and splutters in the wind as it falls from the eastern top of the cave. It was once said that if you caught 48 drops in your mouth of the shattered waterfall from the Ling Spring, you would take first place in the imperial examination.
The Heavenly Gate can be reached via a recently built mountain road that ascends vertiginously from an altitude of 200 meters to the 1,300 meter point after making 99 turns, or, alternatively, by a 7,455-meter-long and 1,279-meter-high cableway. On the mountain, you can also take a sky walk, if you are brave enough, along a spectacular plank path that clings to the side of high precipices.
Almost inevitably, the natural beauty of Tianmen Mountain attracted the attention of Mei Shuaiyuan, a pioneer of open-air performances using scenic areas as natural stages to showcase local culture and traditions. In less than two years, he created the large-scale song-and-dance drama The Fox Fairy of the Heavenly Gate. Using the mountain’s bizarre rock formations and picturesque valley as its backdrop, the production brings to life a local folktale about the forbidden love between the fox fairy and a woodchopper.
As the show begins, hundreds of girls in beautiful costumes sing their way onto the stage as dozens of men mime splitting firewood and ploughing fields, presenting a life of peace and hard work. Then with the switch of lights a different scene is illuminated and the story begins. Here, the Fox King chooses a white fairy fox as his new concubine. This white fox, however, longs for human life. One day she, quite by chance, meets a poor but hardworking woodchopper on Tianmen Mountain, and they fall in love, and the story that unreels tells of an eternal love between beings of two different worlds. As the show progressed, it felt to me as if the mountains and water were performers in their own right. The great rock precipices seemed to weep for the lovers as they struggled to stay together as waterfalls cascaded from on high like streams of tears, while the murmuring of the river seemed to be giving its best wishes to them as they were finally reunited for good.
Watching the show, the audience can enjoy both the natural and cultural beauty of their setting, with natural mountains and water in the background along with traditional stilt houses, as pleasing folk songs greet their ears. I came away enchanted by Tianmen Mountain and its surroundings.
