Zhangjiajie Adventures

Hey, guys!

My work is just finishing up our Spring Break (one of the many perks of working at a school), and a couple of coworkers and I spent most of our break time at one of the most scenic locations in China: the Floating Mountains of Zhangjiajie.

Zhangjiajie is located in Hunan province, about five hours away from Changsha by high speed bus and hard seat train.  It's a city of about 1.5 million people up in some of the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen.  We spent our time specifically in the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, hiking through the Yangjiajie, Tianzi Mountain, and Gold Whip Stream areas. 

Fun fact: James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar got the inspiration for its floating mountains from the "Floating Mountains" in this park (found specifically in the Tianzi Mountain section), and there's even a mountain in Yangjiajie called Avatar Mountain (or the Hallelujah Mountain) after the movie. 

I found out about these "Floating Mountains" in China after I first watched Avatar when I was 17 years old, and since then I've wanted to see them for myself.  Unfortunately April is rainy season in Hunan province so there was a lot of fog and mist during our trip; however, it was still so much fun and totally worth it!  Check out some of the pictures I took below:




































Want to go to Zhangjiajie to experience these beautiful mountain sights yourself?  Check out this super handy guide on the city, parks, food, and everything else you should know for planning your trip.  And if you're looking for a great place to stay, check out Red Apple Inn in the Wulingyuan section of Zhangjiajie.  It's very close to one of the park entrances (5 minutes by car, 10-15 minutes walking) and is run by a wonderful lady named Amy Qin and her family.  She's speaks very good English and took great care of us during our stay at her inn.  If you stay at Red Apple, make sure you try the shredded pork and carrot, smoked braised pork, and tomato and eggs dishes at their restaurant, which is in the inn.  They are spectacular, just like the people who work there.

The Zhangjiajie pictures will be added to the Photos tab in the next day or two along with some more that I didn't include in this post, so be sure to look for those.

Until next time!

Soli Deo Gloria!


- Chrisi -

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Story Time: Prayers & Answers

Story Time! A while back a couple of coworkers and I decided to do something special for a friend's birthday, which for mei guo ren (Americans) often means going to a restaurant that serves Western food.  You can totally find almost any American "comfort food" here in China (peanut butter, Nutella, Frosted Flakes, Pringles, Heinz Ketchup, notice how my list is basically all junk food...), but it does come at a price.  An expensive price.  As such I often don't buy a lot of imported Western food (which is probably also better for my health as well as my bank account), but when it's a friend's birthday, hey, why not for one night? But I digress... This particular Western-style restaurant was actually run by some foreign friends, so it's not knock-off versions of hamburgers and fries.  That night we came in sort of late, so we were the only three customers there.  We were just flipping through the menu at our table when the restaurant owner suddenly lo
Read more

Wuxi Adventures

Image
Hello, all! Last weekend I was unable to post due to a business trip, but now I'm back and ready to get into the groove of things once again! Girls Team at pre-game warm-ups (shot on my phone) For those of you who don't know, I'm the Marketing Administrator at an American-style international school in Wuhan, China.  Most of my job involves making marketing strategies, researching, meetings (oh, so many meetings!), and even some graphic design, but last weekend I had the opportunity to try something new. I became a sports photographer. There are seven international schools in China that are run by the same organization (including the one I work at), and every year they have a variety of inter-school tournaments, fairs, and even Model United Nations.  Last weekend was the High School Basketball Tournament in Wuxi, and I got the go-ahead to tag along and take pictures for marketing purposes. And I was pretty nervous. See, I'm not a professional photographer
Read more

The Chinglish Gallery

Image
There are so many things I love about China: food, culture, history, landscape, cityscapes.  But so far I've been only posting about serious things, so today (like everyday, honestly) is a wonderful day to talk about the one thing in China that never fails to make me smile (and snort sometimes). In English, we call it "Chinglish."  Maybe there's a Chinese word for it - I don't know - but it basically just means that someone shoved some Chinese characters into Bing Translate and didn't bother to check if the English that came out actually made sense. Sometimes it's just unfortunate spelling errors. Sometimes you can figure out what they most likely were trying to say. Sometimes you got nothin'. Either way, it's super fun to see how two languages (Chinese and English, in this case) are so different that direct translation results in nothing less than pure shenanigans.  This post contains some of my absolute favorite examples of Chinglish th
Read more