The Middle Kingdom Part IV - The End

Zhangjiajie - Tianzi ("Son of Heaven") Mountain

Unlike Tianmen Mountain, Tianzi is full of rock formations, and is advertised everywhere in the park as the inspiration for the planet Pandora in the film Avatar. I haven't seen the film so I can't really judge.
All I can say is that the pictures here are not really doing it justice. It's like a forested Grand Canyon.

Lots of tourists. I was really surprised at the number of Korean tourists since Zhangjiajie is nowhere near Korea. It's so popular with Koreans that most of the signs have korean translations and the vendors can speak simple korean. I know this because one of them tried to sell me stuff in korean.  

There were a lot of photo kiosks where they take pictures for you. The vendors know all the best angles/scenes and can even laminate the pictures for you. I didn't buy any since I had my own camera. Plus, it was a little off-putting seeing all the computers and printers set up right next to the majestic scenery. It also made avoiding the kiosks in the longshots difficult.

 We took the elevator down the mountain. 300 stories, according to the elevator display. Because there were so many people waiting, they really squeezed as many people as possible per elevator. As a result, I wasn't too scared on the way down simply because the whole thing was just too funny. Or maybe it was because the oxygen was running out. Either way, we landed safe and sound.


A lot of the rock formations have names/scenes associated with them. Some are super apt while others take a little more imagination.

A general inspecting his troops.

An old man carrying a backpack of medicine (in the distance)

The Three Sisters

Yueyang Tower (Hunan)
This tower is also a member of the Four Towers of China. I don't know too much about it except that it was built as a vantage point in a time of war back in the Three Kingdom period. The three stories represent the sky, the person, and the earth. The "tomb" (quotation marks because it doesn't hold the actual body) of a well-known beauty of that period is located near this tower.

It was also rebuilt many times. You can see one of its predecessors as a scale model (right). Puurtty!!!! Imagine one these babies in your backyard. How cool would that be?

Well, that's the end of that.
Our tour guide really sucked on this trip. He didn't know his stuff, basically ditched us at each site, and was super insensitive. Really wanted to sock him in the face the last day - he actually ranted about us TO us for a good hour. The nerve of that guy! But no matter, still saw some interesting stuff and didn't get hoodwinked, so I'd count that as a win.