Beautiful Zhangjiajie, Fenghuang Ancient Town, Shaoshan & Changsha

I have always wanted to visit the imfamous "Ten Miles Gallery". So, I have decided to spend my last few days of 2008 till the beginning of 2009 in Zhangjiajie, a scenic place in China Hunan province with a friend. This is really one of the most scenic trip that I have been on.... to top it off, it SNOWED!!!

ZhangJiaJie

Flew from Singapore to Xiamen and transit domestic flight to Changsha, a city in the Hunan Province. From Changde, we coached around 4 hours to Zhangjiajie. The day that I arrived in Zhangjiajie was a rainy day and tour guide recommended that we first visit the Longwang Cave (Dragon King Cave), regarded as one of the biggest and oldest caves in China. The cave is pretty interesting. I still recalled that I was freezing outside the cave (it was winter and the temperature drops to only a few degrees celsius plus the wet weather). But once I step into the cave, it was so warm! The cave was lighted with various coloured lights and we are able to see nice rocks formation.



The next morning, the rain has stopped and we tooked a nice boat ride on the tranquil Lake of Baofeng at Suoxiyu Valley (and its waterfall), the highest lake in Hunan. As we are worried the good weather might not last, we decided to ascend Mt Tianzishan while the weather is good. The cable car ride up Tianzishan was like a ride into a fairyland. Mt Tianzishan is noted for its stone forests, cloud seas, twilight and winter snow. We are indeed lucky that it started to snow when we are on top of Mt Tianzishan! The green pine trees with white snow created an extremely beautiful painting. From Tianzishan, we proceeded to Helong Park, Xihai, and Yuanjiajie, famous for the First Bridge under Heaven and Back Garden. Thereafter, we took the fastest and highest lift called the Bailongdianti back down.



The next day, the snowing continued as we toured Huiangshizai, followed by China’s first National Forest Park. Highlight of this tour included the Legendary Golden Whip Stream (Jinbian Stream), with numerous impressive sights along the stretch of 5km stream. Thereafter, we visited the imfamous Ten Mile Scenic Drawing Corridor to explore the picturesque gallery of mountain and river sceneries.



Before we left Zhangjiajie, we made a last stop to Tianmenshan, which can only only be accessed via a 40 minutes cable car ride from the Zhangjiajie city. Tianmenshan, meaning the Heavenly Gate Mountain, is famous for a special "Heavenly Gate", which is a very big whole on one of its peak. The route up to the Heavenly Gate is called the "Road to Heaven", which is a super winding road. It was snowing very heavily when we ascended and the top of the mountain was covered with thick snow. Due to this, we were unable to ride on the "Road to Heaven" änd can only see the Heavenly Gate from afar. But still, it was pretty nice having snow fights, making snowman and playing with the snow at the top of the mountain.




Fenghuang (Phoenix) Ancient Town

After Tianmenshan, we started our long journey to Fenghuang Ancient Town. Enroute (about 3 hours), we stopped at Furong Town. It used to be named Wangcun Village untill a famous movie entitled Furong Town was filmed here. From Furong town, we coached another 5 hours before we reached Fenghuang Ancient Town. It was the night of 31 December 2008. The tiring journey, with winding roads was all worth it. This ancient town is so beautiful! As it was New Year's Eve, a lot of people were gathering at the river to put water lights for good blessing for the coming year. Needless to say, I did that too!

Happy New Year 2009! We started off with a sumptous breakfast of bao and noodles at a road side store (the hotel did not give a good breakfast so the tour guide decided to forgo the hotel breakfast and brought us to the road side store). After which, we proceeded to visit Fenghuang Ancient Town. The ancient town is exquisite
and delicate and has witnessed great changes in history. Inside, there are ancient stone lanes, the unique suspension houses of Tu and Miao tribe and view the Ancient city wall. I would say Fenghuang is really one of the nicest Ancient Town that I have visited.








Shaoshan

From Fenghuang, we took the newly opened expressway to Changde, which took only 5 hours. From there, we coached to Shaoshan where the late leader of China, Mao Ze Dong, was born and grew up. We visited the Mao’s Family home, Mao’s bronze statue and Mao’s Memorial Hall.


Changsha

From Shaoshan, it took another 3 hours to reach Changsha, the capital city of Hunan Province. Changsha is famous for the Yuelushuyuan, an anxient school at the foor of Mt Hengshan, Mawangdui Museum (the tomb where you can see the real corpse of a thousand years old lady) and Hunan embroidery (Xiangxiu). We went to this place called "Fire Palace" for dinner and I would say the food is really nice. Do try out the smelly tofu (it's not smelly at all) and the boba (a sweet glutinous rice ball) and the spicy Hunan cruine. At night, do take a walk at the commercial walking street.

I would say this was the most memorable trip. Zhangjiajia and Fenghuang are indeed places worth visiting!