Dr. Thompson in China 12-13

ZhangJiaJie, TianZi Mountain and Yellow Dragon Cave

Our university took the foreign teachers on a 4 day trip to the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in northern Hunan Province. In 1982 it was recognized as China's first national forest park. The most notable geographic features of the park are the pillar-like formations which are a distinct hallmark of Chinese landscape, and can be found in many ancient Chinese paintings. The weather is moist year round, and as a result, the foliage is very dense and it's often misty and foggy. The air quality in Xi'an has been bad many days this winter / spring so one of the things we all loved was the fresh, clean air! One of the park's quartz-sandstone pillars has been officially renamed "Avatar Hallelujah Mountain" because photographs from Zhangjiajie are said to have inspired the floating Hallelujah Mountains scene in the film, Avatar.

The university gave us these rain hats ... what do you think?

We were literally "in the clouds"

Monkeys were all over

Hiking along the Golden Whip Stream

To get to the top of Yuanjiajie Mountain, we had to wait in a line for 3 hours to take the BaiLong elevator up the side of the mountain. The long line was agonizing but the views were spectacular! Since we were a group from China, Japan, Germany, France, and America, we entertained ourselves with stories of our homes and singing songs. This also entertained the other Chinese tourists waiting in line. :-) By the time we came down the mountain by cable car, it was totally dark and the fog had again rolled in ... kind of creepy floating in a dark cloud because we would sometimes come right next to the mountain and it looked like we were going to crash into it ... but we safely arrived at the bottom.

Avatar overlook

Natural Bridge

Crowds!!

The last major area we visited was the Yellow Dragon Cave with an underground river ride and 3,000 steps to the top of the cave ... it got hot! The park around the cave was also beautiful.

Yellow Dragon guarding his cave

Colored lights are used throughout the cave

Disembarking from the boat ride

Planting crops

Loved all the water wheels in the park

Great backdrop for wedding pictures

The kids are always curious about us and they are so cute

Learning to iron at an early age

The Yuanjia village was culturally very interesting. This is the largest minority in the area and our guide is of this ethnic group so it was fun for her to share her culture. Only 4 of us toured this area while everyone else went shopping!