In Zhangjiajie, the landscape seems to have exchanged the usual mountain silhouette for a forest of stone. More than 3,000 quartz-sandstone pillars and peaks rise from ravines in the Wulingyuan area of Hunan. Mist can soften their outlines; streams and forest fill the spaces below. The scale is cinematic, but the best way to understand it is not to rush from viewpoint to viewpoint. It is to walk, pause and notice how geology, water and vegetation occupy the same narrow valley.
The national forest park was established in 1982 as China’s first national forest park, a milestone in the country’s early forest-tourism movement. Wulingyuan was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1992. The wider property covers about 26,400 hectares and includes thousands of narrow quartz-sandstone pillars, many more than 200 metres high, along with gorges, streams, waterfalls, caves and natural bridges. Its international recognition rests on the ensemble of landforms, not on a single “Avatar” viewpoint.
