Before I start, I combined by posts from today and yesterday because I spent most of my day today dealing with logistics for tomorrow and my trip to Fenghuang County. Also, my feet still hurt from yesterday.
A friend of mine linked a Facebook post about James Cameron's 2009 hit film Avatar. "Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time" it starts "can you name two characters and a quote from Avatar?" It then asks. The answer to both questions, for me, is no. What I do remember from Avatar was how great it looked. Now why am I telling you this? You know all the cool mountain scenes from Avatar? You know where they filmed those? On top of Tianzi Mountain (天子山), Zhangjaijie National Park, P. R. China. To enhance my nerd cred, I decided to visit what the park map called the "Avatar Filming Location." I can tell you, it does look as cool as you think it does. While the rocks don't float like they do in Avatar, the towering pillars of ancient rock are almost more impressive. What took Avatar needed the peek of human animation and computing technology to complete, nature did with only two large chunks of rock pushing against one another and some rain. In order to get to this site I had to use the Bailong elevator (百龙电梯), the Guinness Book of World Records Official Tallest Outdoor Elevator on Earth. While kind of cool, the elevator was not nearly as interesting as the mountains. After exploring the mountain's top, I ended up walking down and accidentally ending up in another section of the park. Unforntually, there was no internal park bus back to the entrance by my hotel in Wulingyuan. I ended up getting a van to Zhangjaijie City where I then got a van Wulingyuan and a bowl of cheap noodles from some random lady in the bus station. The noodles were meh. About two hours later I arrived in Wulingyuan, just in time to get my self a plate of fried rice, a box of cookies, and a bottle of 26RMB wine (about 4USD). I should have went for the 46RMB wine because the 26RMB wine tastes like Manischewitz. Even though I got lost and my legs still hate me, it was still a cool day in the park.
1 Comment
Dad
1/24/2017 04:53:08 am
Glad you finally made it back to your hotel none the worse for wear.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
November 2021
Categories
All
|