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Zhangjiajie, China

If you’ve watched the 2009 film ‘Avatar’ (you know, the one with the blue people) and marvelled at the spectacular otherworldly landscape of the alien planet then you’ll be interested to know that the landforms of Zhangjiajie National Park in Hunan province were the inspiration (although the pillars here don’t float in mid-air!). If you haven’t seen the film then you just need to know that this is some of the most incredible scenery we’ve ever seen.

Tianmen mountain

The hotel where we stayed is just around the corner from the cable car station to Tianmen Mountain. This is not technically a part of the National Park but it does offer some stunning views.

Tianmen mountain cable car station

The Tianmen mountain cable car is the longest in the world covering almost 7.5km and taking about 30 minutes to reach the summit

There was a steadily moving queue of tourists waiting to walk along the 60m section of the cliffside path which is floored with glass

Feeling brave standing on glass with 1,500m of thin air below us

Visitors tie red ribbons to trees to make a wish

Fantastic views from the Guigu cliffs at the eastern side of Tianmen mountain

There were lots of opportunities to dress in traditional costumes and have your photo taken with the view behind – for a fee obviously!

Most of the cliffside path is made from concrete. Our minds boggled at the engineering feat required to get all the concrete up the mountain and attached to the sheer cliff face.

Suspension bridge across a ravine and, in the background, the building at Yunmeng fairy peak

The view was just as beautiful from the western cliff and there were far fewer tourists on that section

Halfway back down the mountain we got off at the middle cablecar station and got into a shuttle bus for the drive up the road of 99 hairpin bends to the Tianmen Cave

Tianmen Cave is a huge opening through the mountain. We climbed the 999 steps to the top

The mountain is famous for a number of stunts attempted by daredevils. French climber Alain Robert who scaled the inside of the cave without ropes is commemorated by this bronze sculpture and a plaque. Other crazy people have tightrope walked up the cableway lines and flown through the cave in wingsuits!

Zhangjiajie National Park

If you can pronounce ‘Zhangjiajie’ such that a Chinese person will understand where you mean you’re doing much better than us. Every time we tried to explain to people we met afterwards where we had been we couldn’t make them understand and just ended up telling them that it was in Hunan Province… The karst scenery reminded us of Ha Long Bay in Vietnam although the pillars here are of sandstone not limestone, plus they’re a long way from the sea!

Our first day in the national park started with another cable car ride. The line up to the Huangshizhai area is much shorter than the Tianmen mountain one, but runs between the sandstone karsts and is breathtakingly beautiful

Enjoying the ride in the Huangshizhai cablecar

Another couple in our hotel who’d already visited advised us to take the clockwise path around the mountain top as the views get better – surely they couldn’t get much better than this?

The monkeys in Zhangjiajie National Park have learnt that visitors often carry their picnic in a carrier bag and will ambush and try to steal the contents of any carrier bag that they spot

The pine trees in Zhangjiajie are a variety of pinus massoniana and manage to grow in seemingly impossible places

We spotted this caterpillar on a fence post, I think he was returning from an appointment with the hairdresser!

Many of the viewing platforms were equipped with professional photographers who would take your family’s photograph in front of the scenery and supply an instant print or even a calendar

The views did indeed get even better the further we walked along the path

The final viewpoint before descending by cable car again is at Five Finger Peak

Signs around the park exhorting visitors not to smoke or litter read somewhat like Confucian aphorisms

After descending from Huangshizhai we took the path along the Golden Whip Stream which gave us neck aching views of some of the karsts from below

There was a large group of monkeys along the trail. We stopped to watch their antics for about 20 minutes

The sides of the Golden Whip Stream valley are dizzyingly high

There were lots of opportunities for sedan chair rides along the trail but it seems that there weren’t many customers as most of the carriers were asleep

On our second morning we made another early start but still had to wait for nearly 90 minutes in the queue for the Tianzi mountain cable car

These karsts are called the ‘Imperial Writing Brush Peaks’ presumably because of their narrow, pointed form

Local boy Marshal He Long was a military leader who supported Mao’s rise to power, he was named as one of the ‘Ten Marshals’ and is buried in this beautiful spot on the top of Tianzi mountain

A bird’s eye view of pine trees growing on the sandstone pillars

After a short bus ride we arrived at the Yuanjiajie area, one of the most heavily touristed areas in the park and for good reason

In this area there is a bridge of rock which formed naturally when the lower rocks fell away due to erosion and weathering

The mountain beyond the rock bridge has been designated as a lucky area to make a wish by attaching a padlock, the fence rails and even surrounding trees were covered with them

This is one of my favourite pictures showing the scale of the park: there is a viewing platform holding about 20 people on top of the cliff to the right of the picture – can you spot it?

This club-shaped karst has been renamed ‘Avatar Hallelujah Mountain’ in honour of the floating mountains in the ‘Avatar’ film

Naturally the viewing point in front of the ‘Avatar Hallelujah Mountain’ has a Mountain Banshee character model that you can pose with for a photograph!

Our final panoramic view of the Yuanjiajie trail

We arrived at Bailong Elevator just as it started to rain heavily which produced some atmospheric swirling clouds around it. The elevator itself is 330m high and attached to the side of the cliff. The walls of the elevator car are made of glass for vertiginous views as you descend!

Despite the high costs for park entrance fees and cable car tickets we thought that Zhangjiajie National Park was worth every penny. We had a tiring but unforgettable three days.

Wuhan, China

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Wuhan has been a major port on the Yangtze River for over 3000 years and has the layers of history which that suggests, from excavations of ancient tombs right through to the site of the 1911 Wuchang Uprising which sparked the nationwide Xinhai Revolution resulting in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the formation of the Republic of China.

View over central Wuhan and the Yangtze River

We only spent a couple of days in the city, and we were pretty worn out from walking for miles around the sights of Nanjing so one of those days was spent recuperating and making the most of a stable and moderately fast internet connection to catch up with some blogging and photo backups. On our second day though we ventured out to see what the city had to offer.

Us with the Yellow Crane Tower

Our first stop was the Yellow Crane Tower, probably the most famous landmark in Wuhan. There has been a Yellow Crane Tower in Wuhan since 223AD although the current structure dates only from 1981. There is an exhibit on each of the five floors of the tower, one of which had models of five of the historic towers.

Models of some of the tower’s incarnations

As we climbed, we found ourselves taking photos of the same view in each direction at progressively higher heights and enjoyed getting a closer look at the bright mustard yellow tiles. We could see construction work in the distance (a common sight in China), grass growing on apartment block rooftops below and several bridges spanning the huge Yangtze River.

Yellow tile details

View over Snake Hill Park including the bell pavilion, from the top floor of Yellow Crane Tower

After descending the stairs we wandered through the rest of the park, there is a huge ‘lucky’ bell which for a charge you could toll, a statue of Yue Fei who was a 12th century local military hero and a lovely garden with lawns which to me looked almost English until Andrew pointed out the numerous bonsai trees…

Snake Hill Park details (clockwise from top left): Lion topped fence post; statue of Yue Fei (complete with posing children); flowers in the garden; carved stone gate

City buses in China generally have no English signage though they are frequently the best way of getting from one sight to another. Fortunately we’d done some research on bus numbers and written down our stop names in Chinese so were able to navigate the system to our next destination, the Hubei Provincial Museum.

Hubei Provincial Museum

This huge and very modern museum displays mostly archaeological exhibits especially from this region of southern China. The highlight, and where we focussed our attention, was the exhibit on the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng which was excavated in 1978. It is the tomb of a feudal king buried 2400 years ago and incredibly, academics were able to date it by calculating when the observation of a chart of constellations decorating the lid of a trunk was made!

Inside the tomb were lots of intricately decorated food vessels, including this bronze lidded dou which would have been used to hold seasonings

Particularly noteworthy are the musical instruments, 125 pieces in total including drums, stringed instruments, panpipes and stone chimes as well as the centrepiece, the heaviest musical instrument in the world, a set of 64 bells weighing in at a massive 5000kg. According to the explanatory notice

Each bell is able to produce two tones. The whole set covers a range of five and a half octaves with twelve pitches and change of keys.

which sounds pretty impressive to me with my limited musical knowledge…

The set-bells take pride of place in the centre of the exhibition room

The highlight of the afternoon was attending one of the 20 minute performances of replicas of the instruments in the small on-site concert hall. Very professionally done and thoroughly enjoyable we wished it had been longer.

Set-bell concert performance

One of the pieces that we are sure we recognise but thus far have been unable to dredge the name of from our memories is this – if anyone can put us out of our misery we’d be very grateful!

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rBFb24E9kw]

[update: with many thanks to Clare who emailed to let us know that it’s Beethoven’s Ode to Joy]

Classical gardens of Suzhou, China

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Suzhou is situated on the banks of the mighty Yangtze River and is a city of canals. Also dubbed the ‘Venice of the East’ although we’ve travelled through several alternate Venices by now (St Petersburg, Bangkok, …) and none of them are even close to having the same atmosphere as the real thing.

Not a gondola in sight…

Suzhou is famous for its classical Chinese gardens, nine of which have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Unlike the imperial parks of the Forbidden City and Summer Palace in Beijing, these were private gardens, built by wealthy men and intellectuals and designed to recreate natural landscapes in miniature.

A miniature landscape, rocks, trees, water and small pavilion in the Master-of-Nets Garden

The Humble Administrator’s Garden

The Humble Administrator’s Garden originally dates from the early 16th century and is the largest of the remaining gardens in Suzhou. At first we though it wasn’t actually so big but it’s full of twisting paths and little buildings so that you can actually get lost. It is cleverly designed so that beautiful vistas open up across the garden at various spots, some even use the technique of ‘borrowing’ scenery, something that we also saw in Japanese gardens. Here, for example, looking across to the North Temple Pagoda:

It was a hazy day, but you can see the pagoda at the end of the lotus pond (it’s actually 0.5km away from the garden

Like many of the buildings in this and the other gardens, the name comes from Chinese literature. The garden was first laid out by Wang Xianchen when he retired from public life as an imperial envoy and poet. He was inspired by a quote from an essay titled ‘Staying at Home Idle’:

To cultivate my garden and sell my vegetable crop…is the policy of a humble man

After Wang died, his eldest son lost the garden to pay gambling debts and it was split and changed hands several times in the following centuries before being reconsolidated by the government in 1949.

The Mountain-in-View Tower

I’m sure it would be a wonderful place to relax on a quiet day but when we visited it was absolutely overrun with tour groups. Chinese tour groups are like an extreme version of a normal tour group;

they have a kind of herd mentality that makes them lose any peripheral vision and just keep walking in a straight line regardless of whether their way is blocked by another person
they are obsessed with taking photos of each other, usually to the exclusion of whatever ‘view’ they’re standing in front of and frequently draped over a wall or statue
many walk around with their cameraphones in front of their face snapping everything but looking at nothing
the guides are equipped with a microphone to project the information as far as possible, not the most peaceful in a compact garden with dozens of them competing for attention

See if you can spot Andrew taking a photo for someone in the middle of this chaos

The House of Sweet-smelling rice contained an exhibition of stunning embroidery by a local craftswoman, Haiyun Zhou

At the far end of the garden is a space given over to hundreds of bonsai trees. This section wasn’t quite as packed as the other areas of the garden and we enjoyed seeing the variety of different trees which had been miniaturised, and some of them had some forming wires in place to shape their branches.

The bonsai trees were displayed on pedestals in the areas between the paths

I really liked spotting the patterns of stones in the paths

A rare quiet moment in the Humble Administrator’s Garden

Master-of-Nets Garden

Having learnt our lesson from the day before we were determined to get to the Master-of-Nets Garden as early as we could to minimise the crowds. The garden opened at 7.30am but with a one hour walk from our hotel the best we could manage was 8am. It paid off, we weren’t the only ones there but it was a much nicer and more enjoyable experience.

Plan of the Master-of-Nets Garden in tiles

In the centre of the garden is a pond surrounded by the living quarters of the former residence which are linked by courtyards and covered walkways.

Entrance doorway of carved stone

Rock gardens found in the inner courtyards of the Master-of-Nets Garden

Building interiors (clockwise from left): pot plant in The Beauty Within Reach Tower; window in The Watching Pines and Appreciating Paintings Studio; The Peony Study

Reflection of The Prunus Mume Pavilion in the garden’s pond

Looking across the pond from The Leading to Quietude Bridge

Canglang Pavilion

For a city with some major tourist attractions, Suzhou is remarkably lacking in signage (in either Chinese or English). We stumbled across the entrance to Canglang Pavilion when we got lost on our way to the Master-of-Nets Garden and, as it was close by, we returned on our way back to the hotel. It is the oldest of the existing gardens in Suzhou dating from 1044. The name can be translated as Great Wave or Surging Wave Pavilion.

The garden is fronted by a wide canal and you must cross a bridge to enter

Situated on a small hill in the centre of the garden is the eponymous pavilion, a popular place for a rest and a picnic

A covered walkway leads around this rather murky pool to The Buqi Pavilion

Latticed windows in the whitewashed walls are a notable feature in the Canglang Pavilion

An old and twisted tree outside The Pure Fragrance House

Our favourite of the gardens that we visited was the Master-of-Nets Garden for its clever layout and rock gardens. I’d really like to visit Suzhou again in other seasons, I think the gardens would feel quite different and that the most memorable views would be transformed by a covering of snow or brightly coloured autumn leaves.

Our favourite Korean foods

Side dishes

I love that as soon as you arrive in a Korean restaurant, sometimes before you’ve even picked up a menu, several small dishes of mostly pickled vegetables are put in the middle of the table. I’d say we got an average of 6 dishes with each meal, there’s no cover charge for them and they’re usually refillable if you ask nicely.

Hotteok

These were one of the first things we tried after arriving in Busan and for the remainder of our time in the city they were an almost daily treat. A hotteok is a small round bun which has had a spoonful of brown sugar secreted in the dough before being fried in butter on both sides. It is then snipped open halfway and filled with a mixture of toasted peanuts, sunflower, pumpkin and sesame seeds. The stalls in the BIFF square were so busy they had queues, but the stallholders had a very efficient production line system and turnover was fast.

Hotteok (clockwise from left): batter being filled with sugar and formed; on the griddle; piping hot and ready to devour – yum!

Hangover Soup

How can you not love a food with a name like that?! In Korean it is Haejangguk and it consists of a peppery beef broth with hunks of meat, greens and a side of rice. There are slight regional variations, one we had in Andong contained cubes of ox blood, and in Busan the meat was on the bone. The soup is rich and warming and I think it would cure just about any malaise, not just a hangover.

Korean barbecue

Barbecue restaurants are very common in Korea and they’re a lot of fun. Every table has its own barbecue, sometimes gas powered or sometimes a dish of hot charcoal is brought from the fire pit to the table. Once you’ve ordered the meat, usually either beef or pork, it is served raw and you cook it yourself. We found the array of side dishes to be even more impressive than usual in the barbecue restaurants and unaccountably often included a bowl of raw garlic cloves. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do with them, but I liked the smokiness of them once grilled, and eating lots of garlic is supposed to keep the mosquitoes off which is an added side benefit if it works!

Barbecue restaurants (clockwise from top left): marinated pork ribs; beef cooking over real coals; pork on the griddle over a gas flame; Julie tending the barbecue

Gimbap

Gimbap is my new favourite packed lunch. It’s a sheet of seaweed covered with a layer of cooked rice and a line of fillings before being rolled and sliced. They’re like a fat version of a Japanese maki roll. Fillings typically include cucumber, pickled radish, carrot, and some protein, for example ham or tuna or omelette. I like the crunch of the vegetables with the flavour from the ‘meat’ and the fillingness of the rice. We’ve been plotting an English inspired version to make when we get home, the ‘Ploughman’s gimbap’ with cheddar cheese, ham, chutney and pickled onions is the front runner!

Very spicy pork gimbap on the left and tuna mayo on the right, at Robot Gimbap in Seoul

Soft tofu stew

I’ve got to confess that the English translation of this dish’s name doesn’t sound too appealing but it is really good. The Korean name is Sundubu Jjigae and it is a spicy stew containing dollops of tofu with a custardy consistency along with vegetables and meat or seafood. Just before serving, a raw egg is dropped into the bubbling pot – in one restaurant, the egg was served on the side for us to break into the stew ourselves! The stew is served with a bowl of rice, dried seaweed flakes and the usual array of pickled vegetable side dishes to mix together.

Soft tofu stew with rice, seaweed and an array of pickles

Whatever you do, don’t get it confused with soondae-gu which is a soup made from pig’s intestines, obviously we would never make such a rookie error…would we?

Bibimbap

Bibimbap literally means “mixed rice” and a version of it appears on nearly every restaurant’s menu. It consists of rice, vegetables, meat, chilli paste and sometimes a raw or fried egg which is then all mixed together. It was usually a pretty safe option to order when we weren’t sure what anything else was – its name is easy to spot amongst all the Korean due to the repeating characters 비빔밥.

Samgyetang

Chicken ginseng soup, or samgyetang, was something we heard about right at the start of our stay but it was just a couple of days before we left the country that we eventually got to try it. The flavour was reminiscent of a creamy chicken soup but very delicately flavoured with a variety of whole spices most notably ginseng. The chicken was very tender and stuffed with rice before being cooked so it was a filling dish as well as being a change from the highly spicy foods.

Geongang Samgyetang, described on the menu as ‘Young chicken soup with ginseng and other oriental medicines for health’ although I’m dubious about any health benefits

Donddongju

We tried this traditional drink in Gyeongju where it was described as ‘thick rice beer’. It’s cloudy and has a really nice smooth flavour. Served in a large bowl with a wooden ladle to dish up the individual portions into small bowls.

Pancakes

One of the most common street foods in Korea are hearty pancakes, more akin to a frittata than a crepe. Various things can be mixed into the batter, kimchi and spring onion versions are popular, and we had a delicious mung bean pancake at Gwangjang Market in Seoul.

Frying up stacks of mung bean pancakes, bindaetteok, in Gwangjang Market

How to make kimchi

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Kimchi, or spicy fermented cabbage, is the national food of South Korea and a small dish appears alongside pretty much every meal served in the country, even breakfast! I’m pretty sure that there are as many variations on the recipe as there are Korean grandmas but the class we took at the Seoul Kimchi Academy House hopefully gives us a good base to work from. For me, the class was a little fast paced as we barely had time to finish one step before the instructor was talking us through the next one, but the ladies running it were friendly and it was a fun experience.

In Korean aprons ready to start

Step 1 – prepare the cabbage

Kimchi is usually made from Napa cabbage, also called Chinese cabbage. Depending on their size, the cabbages should be halved or quartered lengthwise so that the leaves are still attached to the core and then salt should be rubbed between each layer of leaves before setting the cabbages aside, covered with water, in a bowl or bucket for around 7 hours in the summer, or up to one day in the winter. Once they’ve given up some of their liquid and the leaves are limp, they need to be rinsed thoroughly three times in fresh water before being gently squeezed to get rid of any excess liquid.

Our instructor with the pre-prepared cabbage quarters

Step 2 – prepare the rest of the vegetables

Obviously we didn’t have enough time in the class to do step 1 so we skipped ahead to the second step, preparing the rest of the vegetables. To make 1kg kimchi you will need one quarter large Napa cabbage, a good sized chunk of daikon radish, 3 spring onions, and 2 of what I think were garlic chives.

A big chunk of radish and some spring onions, before and after

Chopping our radish chunks

Step 3 – measure the spices and mix

Add the following to the prepared radish and onion:

1tsp garlic and ginger paste (ratio of 1:5 ginger to garlic)
1tsp fish sauce
1tsp salted (not dried) shrimps
1tsp sugar
1tsp sesame seeds
1tsp sticky rice paste (use a rice flour and water paste or cook rice in too much water and liquidise)
3tsp red chilli flakes

Mix everything thoroughly with your hands making sure to wear gloves (especially if you use contact lenses!).

Step 4 – add the cabbage

Add the cabbage quarter to the bowl and work the radish and spice paste between the leaves taking care to make sure all the surfaces are well coated.

To store the kimchi, our instructor showed us how to take the cabbage quarter in our palm with the two outer leaves hanging down, twist them under and around to make a tight bundle, and stuff any loose radish pieces into the hole that this creates.

Kimchi bundles ready for storage

Step 5 – ferment

Put your kimchi into a suitable container and leave to ferment for at least a week. Some Koreans like their kimchi really sour and might keep it for up to one year before using! You can also use it as an ingredient to make kimchi soups and stews or even pancakes.

Traditionally large pots are used to store kimchi, such as these which were for sale at the end of our street

Ours was fastened into a plastic bag, squeezed to make it as airtight as possible, and then sealed into these foil bags for easier transportation

We’re looking forward to opening the packets up for a taste test soon!

two year trip

Andrew and Julie's Travelling Adventures