24°30'38.74"N 111°12'27.54"E
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| (from Pexels ) |
Clearly, the Wulingyuan Mountains are the most scenic highlight of Zhangjiajie, the oldest national park in all of China. Its beauty has stunned generations for over 700 years, something that has granted it a lot of legends while being, at the same time, a geological masterpiece. But it was James Cameron who chose this wonderful landscape for his world-famous movie Avatar to represent the "Hallelujah Mountains", and therefore, it attracted tourists from all over the world. Let's discover in detail the Wulingyuan Mountains, from their formation to their performance in Hollywood.
400 million years ago (long before Hollywood was even created), during the Devonian period of geology, the Wulingyuan Mountains started to develop thanks to their geographical situation between the Yangtze Plate and the South China Folds. These two tectonic plates clashed a lot and very brutally, moving up and down the layers of quartz sandstone until they formed these finger-shaped peaks. Of course, wind and rain had a hand in it and did the later job of shaping them even weirder. The last step was the accommodation of mother nature on the rocky relief; humanity added a pavilion, some souvenir shops, a McDonald's and a cable car.
But humans didn't only build things on them; the Tujia tribe called this area of China home and coexisted with the ecosystem. Legend tells the story of the warrior Xiang Dakun, nicknamed Tianzi (literally meaning Son of Heaven), who was the leader of the tribe and stood against the Ming Dynasty until they ended up in war and were defeated and killed (in other words, the son of heaven returned to where he had come from). But as a form of honor, the mountain where he was killed is still named after him and is probably the most iconic in the whole park. Its name is Tianzi Mountain. And as a matter of fact, Tianzi is so adored that it is said to have "four wonders" which coincide with meteorological phenomena that make the summit look more epic. These wonders are the Sea of Clouds, Moonlight, Sunrise and Winter Snow.
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| Tujia Women (from Wikimedia Commons ) |
Now, in 1982, the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park was established, making it the oldest national park in China. Apart from the Wulingyuan Range, the park includes the Baofeng Lake, the Mayoan river, a futuristic bridge made completely out of glass (yes, the floor included) and the so-called Tujia Ethnic Customs Park. The last one is basically a big size model of a traditional Tujia hamlet where you can learn about the culture.
| Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge (helds the record for the world's deepest bungee jumping) (from Wikimedia Commons ) |
Lastly, we focus again on Avatar, the movie that has sold the most tickets in history and that has made Wulingyuan so famous, but has in a way damaged its reputation since tourism has grown to massive quantities, leading to pollution of the ground and modification of the ecosystem. Even so, its landscape still fascinates everyone.
Sources and Picture Credits:
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic (Learn more)
Picture 2 https://www.flickr.com/photos/fortes/ (Filipe Fortes)
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (Learn more)
Picture 3: Wikimedia user אביהוד
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