Korean Pine Profuse Yichun

Seeing the spectacular Korean Pine woods at Tangwang River Park in no way lessened our wonder at the sight Wuying presented. Wandering through the pristine forest, sunshine filtering through its dense boughs and leaves, dappling us and the grass below, evoked a fairy tale ambience. The air was fragrant with rosin. Fungus and mushrooms decorated the lower tree trunks, and squirrels occasionally scampered down and past us visitors, scavenging for dropped sunflower seeds and fruit windfalls.

Further down the plank walk we came to a vast body of water – Tianci, or Heaven-sent Lake. Ringed by rolling mountains at the center of a primitive forest, the lake is a confluence of crystal springs. It has a 50,000-square-meter surface, and is six meters deep. Local lore has it that the lake evolved from the crater of a falling star, hence its name, and that a giant aerolite still reposes at its bottom.

At the lake we boarded a shuttle bus for the oxygen “bath” area, another stretch of virgin Korean Pine forest. The air’s extraordinarily high negative oxygen ion content makes the forest a natural oxygen “bar,” where every deep breath is good exercise.

Yichun's rolling terrain blanketed in lush green generates as many as 50,000 negative oxygen ions per cubic centimeter.

Mt. Wuhua

Towards the end of the day I remembered the much discussed Mt. Wuhua (Five-colored mountain), and asked a local friend about it. He chuckled, saying that if we were lucky we might see it the next day. This puzzled me, as we were headed for Maolang (local dialect for hidden wolves) Gully.

A steep dirt road lined with trees, which I gripped to keep steady, took us on our descent to Maolang Gully. After a dozen meters or so the scenery suddenly changed. I found myself standing on the edge of a 300-400-meter-wide abyss with marble smooth, almost vertical rock walls, its bottom out of sight fathoms below.

Two stairways lead to the valley bottom. Visitors generally choose the gentler rather than the steeper of the two, as they can then enjoy the mountain scenery – the brook gurgling below, the waterfall hurtling past, and wild flowers nodding in the cracks of the rock face – rather than watch their footing. The Maolang River meanders across this hilly terrain before emptying in a mighty cascade to the river at the base of the Maolang Gully.