张家界 (Zhangjiajie)

Back to blogging again!

Daan and I went to Zhangjiajie in early June with one of Daan's good friends. 

Zhangjiajie is a huge national park in Hunan Province with more than 3000 narrow sandstone pillars called karsts. Many of the karsts are over 200m high (think 60-storey high skyscrapers!).

It's a long way down if you should fall!

There are many scenic spots, and they are named after what the karsts are supposed to look like.

I was told it's 30% likeness and 70% imagination. 

Use your imagination and those 2 peaks will look like that pair of lovers in the foreground :)

One of my favourite places was a fortress (乌龙寨） built into the side of the mountains. 

When we went there, it was really foggy and you couldn't see anything except a stone wall and a sea of mist. 

Suddenly, the winds changed, there was a gasp all around and out popped this really beautiful scene before our eyes!

This couple sings mountain folk songs for a fee. Our friend dedicated a song to us, which the couple sang with much eye contact and fluttering eyelids :) They sound much nicer from far away (not that they sounded bad, but because of the echo echo echoes...)

In this photo, we see that Daan has great bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, whereas I have none whatsoever. Just couldn't get that pose right! Daan could do the whole flutteringeyelid thing too :)

Another scenic spot we went to was the "Fields in the Sky". This was at the top of one of the karsts.

See the tiny people planting rice! Wonder how they managed to pump the water up so high...

We visited the home of one of the local tour van drivers. He was in the process of converting his home into a backpackers' hostel. Lodging costs about 60-80RMB ($12-16) per room per night at some of the budget hostels. Excludes meals, which are rather costly.

He let us catch one of his chickens to eat :) We paid him, of course.

A pretty butterfly we saw.

Zhangjiajie was one of the filming locations of the the classic TV production "Journey to the East". Daan really knows how to do the 猴拳 (Monkey Fist). 

It happened that our trip coincided with 端午节，the Dragon Boat Festival, 5th day of the 5th lunar month. It is a day to commemorate Qu Yuan, a famous Chinese poet who committed suicide in Miluo River in Hunan Province as a form of protest against the corruption of his era. We all eat our 咸肉粽 (rice dumplings with salty meat filling) or bak-chang in Singapore. Guess what type of rice dumplings they eat in the place where it all originated? 碱水粽 （?alkaline dumplings) or kee-chang with sugar!

 

 

 

We took many other photos, too many to share. 

Consider Zhangjiajie as your next holiday destination :)