Zhangjiajie

Two weekends ago (sorry I write slow) was the first time I've left Guilin on my own free will since I've been here (the others being visa runs). The destination of this trip was Zhangjiajie National Forest park in the northwestern part of
Hunan Province  (the province right above Guangxi). I had Monday off from school due to the Dragon Boat Festival so I figured it would be a good weekend for a change of scenery. I had been getting a little stir crazy from my daily routine here, so I figured missing out on a unique cultural event to go somewhere less populated and stare at some crazy looking landforms was a sacrifice I was willing to make. While Zhangjiajie has always been popular in China (it is the country's first national park) it has recently received worldwide recognition due to the movie Avatar (which I admit I haven't seen). The landscape of the alien planet, Pandora, was inspired by the landscape of Zhangjiajie. Adding to its impressive resume, it is also recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Needless to say, I was pretty excited for this trip. I also had two friends travelling with me...a new experience thus far.

Zhangjiajie is pretty far away and would require an overnight train to get there; therefore, our plan was to leave in the late afternoon on Friday and arrive early Saturday morning. We would then, after checking into our hostel, spend all day Saturday and Sunday at the park before leaving Sunday night. My Mom once told me that my thoughts going into a trip are just as important as the ones at the end, so, after we boarded the train, I took some time to jot a few of them down. In no particular order:

-Good God there's a lot of people in this country
-I hope the Xinjiang seperatists are on a bye week
-Hey, at least we're moving away from Thailand
-Southeast Asia certainly seems to be quite the powderkeg these days
-Melatonin or Baijiu?
-The countryside outside of Guilin is pretty spectacular, I should take more time to appreciate it
-I still can't get over how many people are in this country
-It better be colder in Zhangjiajie than Guilin (When considering the current weather in Guilin the phrase "hot as balls" comes to mind. Not only is it already in the 90s but the humidity is about 10,000% right now...brutal)

The hard sleeper section of our train was a bit dirtier than the trains I have been on in the past; but I figured that if that was the only part of the trip to complain about then I was in pretty good shape. I also had more reason not to complain considering that one of my friends wouldn't even have a bed to sleep on for the entire ride. Because we reserved our tickets so late, there were only two beds left with the rest of the vacant spots being essentially coach-level airplane seats. Knowing that there was somebody in my group that was in a significantly worse situation than myself made me feel a lot better...not the kindest sentiment I've ever had, but true nonetheless (plus we made it up to him by giving him the nicer of the two rooms we booked in our hostel). Our trip went by without incident (well...except for the joker who decided to lay down and fall asleep in my bed while I was hanging out with my friend in another car, but that issue was quickly resolved) and we arrived in the city of Zhangjiajie around 8 the next morning.

Once I stepped off the train, I noticed two things simultaneously:

1) It is much cooler in this place...thank God.
2) Is that fresh air I'm breathing? Yea, I think it is.

Despite being tired, I was already in a good mood as we headed to our hostel to check in. After we checked in, we changed and set off to find a ride into the park. Zhangjiajie is a fairly touristy area, so it wasn't hard to find someone willing to take us there. Standing in the middle of the city, it was hard to believe that we were anywhere close to one of the most famous natural landscapes in the country. There were some cool mountains but nothing I hadn't seen before. The cab driver spoke a rough dialect of Chinese, which, when combined with our limited language skills, left me wondering if we were indeed going to the right place. It was also quite foggy so there wasn't much visibility; however, during the 40 minute drive from the center of the city to the park, the landscape kept getting crazier which told me that we were heading in the right direction (any doubts I had were quickly put to rest when we began seeing Avatar movie signs for what felt like every other mile). Soon enough we arrived at the entrance of the park, bought our day passes, and walked in.

This park is enormous and it's not uncommon for people who visit to stay for a week. Since we would only have two days, we made it our mission to see as much of the area as we could, while also accepting that we wouldn't be able to see all of it. To make it easier to navigate, we decided that we should begin at the highest point and work our way down. In order to get there we took a bus up the mountain which then dropped us of at a station where we would take a gondola to the top. I was really excited to take the gondola but, after being on it for about five minutes, it soon became apparent to me that this was not the best day to take one. The weather that morning was really foggy so, once the gondola reached a height were we would theoretically be able to see all of the cool formations, we found ourselves literally stuck in the clouds. We couldn't see a damn thing, only whiteness. The visibility was so low that the station at the top of the mountain appeared out of nowhere and took us by surprise. We disembarked, walked around, and noticed that there was nobody up there, and for good reason. There was nothing to see. The fog was too heavy. At this point I started to become a bit agitated. As I walked around, I began hearing a voice in the back of my mind saying "Shit Jay, did you really just spend all that time and money to come up here to see this??" I didn't say any of this out loud, but something tells me that I was not the only person in the group feeling this way.

Behind me there is chaos

We quickly found a bus that would take us to another site. Due to the limited visibility, I was a little bit nervous about boarding the bus but at that point we really had no other option. We set off down the road and eventually the fog dissipated (this wasn't a gradual phase out, it was just one minute we couldn't see anything and then all of the sudden the clouds were gone). Cool, maybe we'll be able to see some stuff after all. The bus arrived at another site and we set off once again. Because the fog prevented some places from being visited, the areas where there actually was visibility, I figured, would have heavier tourist traffic than usual. Once we arrived at the scenic areas we realized that this was indeed the case. I've written before about how the concept of forming a line isn't something that is observed here and this place was no different. We were able to get some pretty cool pictures, but what these pictures don't show are the masses of people behind us pushing and boxing each other out all in effort to get to the front so that they can get a picture of themselves holding up a peace sign while standing in front of a rock.

QUICK ASIDE: Seriously, what is up with that? Why do Chinese people feel the need to hold up a peace sign in EVERY. SINGLE. PICTURE? I guess this is better than all those fake-tough white boys holding up gang signs while drunk at a party, but still, let's try to diversify a bit.

The sheer volume of tourists was gradually eroding our experience and we weren't sure where to go from there. Our luck soon changed when we came across a small stone path that was leading down the mountain. The path was pretty steep and wet so nobody was walking on it. We wanted to go to an area where there weren't so many people so we decided to go all Robert Frost on the situation and take the road less traveled. And guess what? It did make all the difference. The path took us to some clearings where we had great vantage points of the spires erupting out of the valley floor. As we continued on, the path began to get much more technical and we soon found ourselves climbing. We weren't sure where we were going but curiosity and hatred for large tourist groups spurred us onward. When we reached the end of the climb we found ourselves on top on one of the spires, Hell yea. This was the best view we had gotten all day, and what was even better is that we didn't have to share it with anybody. The several cigarette butts we saw strewn sporadically across the rock told us that we were not the first people to find this place; but at that moment, this space was ours. We even combined our first names (Jay, Michael, and Samir) to give the place its own name (Jamiracle rock). Aren't we creative?

Finding Jamiracle rock gave our trip the shot in the arm that it had been searching for up to that point. While standing on the edge we saw a large, traditional-looking building off in the distance. We decided that that would be our next destination. going back up was obviously a bit more difficult than going down, but we went beast mode and got it done. We found a path that would

take us over to the building and set off again. When we arrived at the building we found ourselves face to face.........with a McDonald's.

A McDonald's??? Are you F-ing kidding me? This was like a big middle finger to, not just the natural beauty of the place, but the overall culture behind exploring a national park. I couldn't believe it, corporate America had successfully infiltrated one of the most remote areas I have ever been. Ridiculous. Now........having said all that, did I eat there? Hell yea I did, I went to town. McDonald's is awesome and I wasn't in any mood to eat any of that local overpriced bullshit (I realize that people like me are part of the problem and not the solution). After a delicious lunch that consisted of a cheeseburger, fries, chicken nuggets, soda, and ice cream (and yes, I enjoyed every second of it while also realizing the hypocrisy of my actions) we set out again. We decided to get on the first bus we saw even though we didn't know where it would take us. This bus took us to another site on a different side of the park. The place where we got of proclaimed itself as being home to "The First Bridge in the World" (I'm not sure how official this title is but I'm sure it has been there for quite a while). At this point in the day the fog was gone, and there was even a little bit of sun. Even though there were a lot of people at this site as well, it felt less chaotic. We we got on a path which took us along the edges of the cliffs and gave us a great view

of just how dizzyingly high up we were.

I haven't done a good job so far in describing just how cool this place was. When I was much younger I was fortunate enough to see the Grand Canyon in person (I highly recommend doing that if you haven't already) and was absolutely blown away, so much so that that feeling has stuck with me more than a decade later. The reason I'm telling you this now is because since that trip all those years ago I have been lucky enough to see many cool things, but nothing has given me that same sense of wonder until I saw this place. Seeing these enormous formations shooting out of the ground towards the sky like rockets didn't make me feel like I was in another country, but another planet (Pandora perhaps?). We walked around for another two hours before we decided to call it a day.

Even though we decided that it was time to head back, we weren't exactly sure how to do that. We asked one of the park representatives what the quickest way to get back to the main gate was. She told us to take another bus to the site of "The Tallest Elevator in the World" (I think that title is actually official) and buy a ticket to ride it down. This felt like a money trap but we didn't really care. Apparently this elevator is a pretty big tourist draw so we figured we might as well check it out. When we got to the elevator I realized that this was the second most egregious example of overtouristization (yes, I made that word up) in the park besides the McDonald's (and we patronized both of them). Built into the side of an enormous cliff were two glass elevator shafts with buses at the bottom shuttling people back and forth. While the concept of the world's tallest elevator sounded intriguing at first, it became significantly less cool when I got on and realized that the ride was just that...an elevator (They even played elevator music for God's sake). Easily the most anticlimactic ten minutes of the day. Eventually we made it to the bottom where we got on another bus that took us to the front gate of the park. We then found a cab to take us back into town. We made plans to wake up early on Sunday so that we could get a lot of hiking time in so Saturday night was pretty uneventful.

While I certainly enjoyed our day on Saturday, what we did on Sunday will be what I remember the most years from now. The site of our adventure was Tianmenshan (translated as Heaven's Gate Mountain). While this mountain doesn't have anything to do with Avatar, it's spectacular in its own right. Overlooking the city of Zhangjiajie, it's easy to see why it's called Heaven's Gate. This area also made headlines in the extreme sports community in October 2013 when a large crowd of people watched as Hungarian wingsuit BASE jumper, Victor Kovats exploded himself at the base of the mountain after a parachute malfunction (sorry if I sound irreverent about it but that is essentially what happened). In lighter news, Tianmen mountain also made this list on The Chive.

Above the clouds

In order to get to the top, we would have to take another gondola. This one would begin in the middle of the city. Once again, the first few minutes of the ride was pretty cool before we ran into clouds. "Not again," I told myself, but then, something happened that I didn't expect...we rose above the clouds and the mountain was continuing upward. The Chinese tourists that shared the gondola with began shouting out in amazement. While I didn't make any noise myself, I think I shared the same feeling. The mist surrounding the mountain added to its celestial feel. We eventually made it to the top and found an observation tower where we took some more pictures. After that, we followed signs that directing us to a cliff walk. These signs took us to an area called the "Guigu Cliffs." The walk along these cliffs was the most

memorable part for me. The extreme height combined with the sheer drop of the cliff face was shocking. The path and the railings appeared to be structurally sound but I have a mild fear of heights which caused me to become a bit anxious. Still, I was determined not to let that affect my day so we pressed on. Eventually we came to a point on the path where a small skywalk jutted out over the abyss. I wasn't too excited at the thought of walking out there but I knew that I needed to do it. I took a couple of steps when,

The cliffs (the walkway is visible at the top)

all of the sudden, a large group of Chinese tourists in search of a new place to hold up a peace sign got on as well and began the whole boxing out routine. This was not a place to be testing weight limits or brushing up against people so I immediately hopped off and continued up the path. I took many pictures of this area but none of them were able to capture just how high up we were.

After the cliff walk was over, we had time to go see one more site. The next area was at a lower elevation with no direct route from our current location. In order to get there we would have to take a gondola back down below the clouds and then take a bus back up. The bus ride was pretty sketchy. The driver clearly knew what he was doing and he wasn't taking any unnecessary risks but there are just some places in the world that just aren't meant for roads. This road wound its way up the mountain along the edge of some pretty far drops. To add to the danger, the presence of the clouds made the surface of the road wet. We finally made it to our destination where we are confronted with a very long and steep staircase that makes its way up the mountain and stops at an enormous natural arch. We agree at the bottom that we would each go at our own pace and that we would just see each other at the top.

From the bottom, the steps looked pretty steep but, as I made my way up, I realized that they were

even steeper than I thought. Towards the top the steps in front of me were nearly level with my chest. If I was a bigger douche I could talk about how climbing those steps on a mountain called "Heaven's Gate" was a metaphor for life or chasing your dreams or some other bullshit; but I won't. I did, however, feel a sense of accomplishment when I reached the top...that is until I looked next to me and saw a middle aged woman standing there in high heels; I guess the lesson for the day is that some people like to make things unnecessarily hard on themselves. Still, if those heels could talk they would've said "Sit down Jay, you're nothing special for making it up here." We hung out at the top long enough to rest and take some more pictures before beginning our final descent down the mountain to the train station and back home.

On the final bus ride down the mountain I allowed myself to become more introspective about the whole experience.There are some situations here that, due to the fact that I am so far away from home, causes me to exaggerate my emotions toward them (Just adding the two words "In China" at the end of a sentence can make things sound crazier or more different than they actually are. Ex: "I climbed a mountain IN CHINA." "I went to a bar IN CHINA." "I rode a train IN CHINA"), but this was not one of those situations. This place was so unique and wild that I cannot possibly overstate it. The fact that it is in another country is just gravy after that. While my life over the past four months hasn't always been easy or fun it's experiences like this one that humble me and make me look at the bigger picture and realize how lucky I am. The world is an enormous place and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface when it comes to seeing everything there is to see; but, doing things like this makes me feel as though I am chipping away. Although I was physically exhausted when I returned to Guilin I was mentally rejuvenated.

"Going Native" Experience of the Week

It has been awhile since my last post so for this one I have two:

1) My school was nice enough to buy me a cake on my birthday which I took home...only to realize that I don't own a fork.

Let's do this

2) This past Sunday I went with my boss and her family to an area right outside of Guilin called Daxu. We planned on checking the place out a bit before grabbing some lunch. Daxu is a small area located along a river with two villages on either side. I wasn't aware of this going into the outing, but we were arriving on a special day. Once every ten years these two villages have a festival of sorts that serves as a symbol of their friendship. This festival included a dragon dance, boat races, and a large meal. There are many touristy places around here where I feel that the local people try to play up the traditional culture only to attract tourists, which can make things feel a bit contrived and fake. This experience actually felt legit and I was honored to be able to see it.

Funny Sign of the Week

A consistent source of entertainment for me here is seeing all of the people walking around wearing shirts with English words or phrases and having no clue what they mean. This leads to people wearing shirts like these:

The thing about it is that I know the Chinese could just as easily turn it around on westerners and make fun of all the people who get tattoos of Chinese characters without knowing what they say so I don't feel bad about laughing at this. This isn't even the funniest shirt I've seen. Over the past few weeks I've seen not one but two different people wearing a shirt that said "Pervert." Another time I saw someone wearing a shirt that just said "Student Loans."

Reason Why I Like This Place

I'll be able to watch the World Cup!

Random Tangent

This is a question that my Dad and I often debate and we still haven't come up with an answer so I would like to open it up to a wider audience and see if anybody can help us out:

Why is this man famous?

I'm intentionally not going to say who he is because I know that most of you will already know. But, after seeing him sing in the opening ceremony for the World Cup next to Jennifer Lopez and a slew of other sexy Brazilian girls I felt the need to reopen this discussion. It is clear to me that this man has hit the jackpot and probably lives a life that is much cooler than mine will ever be; what isn't so clear though is what he's done to get to this point. If you have any insight into this feel free to comment below.