大家好! My name is Adelina (安玥怡) and I spent last year studying in Hangzhou, China. China for me was a great opportunity to study, get to know the culture and also visit places that I only heard about or seen in movies or documentaries. It was the first time I travelled alone, and for such a long time, so this year spent in China was an experience that has shown me a lot of things both about the country and about myself.
Today I want to tell you about a place called 张家界 – Zhangjiajie. For those of you who got to see the movie Avatar, this place is a must see, since it was the main inspiration source for the film setting. For me, Zhangjiajie it’s definitely the best place in China and I really hope that someday I will be able to go there again.
The main reason I went there was to visit the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, that offers many viewing decks and breathtaking scenic viewpoints, the park offers caves, pools, waterfalls, and towering peaks for exploration. These mountains are known as the inspiration behind James Cameron’s alien world in the movie Avatar, inspiring the name of Hallelujah Mountain. Beside the natural wonders of the park, the glass elevator, the tallest one in the world, took me up 326 meters in less than two minutes!
Another place that I visited and that you should not miss if you happen to be in the area is Tianmen Mountain, meaning Heaven’s Gate Mountain. This is a mountain located within Tianmen Mountain National Park, Zhangjiajie, in the northwestern part of Hunan Province, China. There, I got to climb the seemingly never ending 999 steep and narrow steps, up to the cave called “The Stairway to Heaven”. Going down the mountain, I took the bus over the road “Avenue Leading to the Sky” with its 99 sharp curves. In some places, the road rises steeply at an angle of 70º, suddenly crashing straight into the clouds. It’s an unforgettable experience!
