Beautiful Hunan West - 湘西

Posted On Sunday, June 8, 2008 at at 2:35 AM by Alvin  

The western edge of the Hunan Province (湖南) is known as (湘西) and is well known for the beautiful limestone-quartz formation of Zhang Jia Jie (張家界) and the picturesque village-by-the-river of Feng Huang (鳳凰古城).

Zhang Jia Jie (張家界)
ZJJ is a huge national park which really warrants at least a week's stay to explore the entire park. With three days, we saw the main sites with the help of the internal "green" shuttle buses and a couple of medium-effort (3 hours) stair cases. The park was not as packed as we had thought for this time of the year, as we were told by local villagers that the Sichuan earthquake a few weeks back had deterred many of the would-be tourists. The mountain formations were just stunning and they looked like three-dimensional water-color Chinese paintings !Feng Huang (鳳凰古城)
After three lovely days exploring ZJJ, we moved on to the ancient village of Feng Huang (鳳凰古城). This village-by-the-river oozed character aplenty ! We explored the narrow winding streets behind the river and they reminded us of our times in Lijiang (麗江). One word though, this was a very lively and young town as amongst the quiet and characteristic village houses were some major drinking holes with heavy R&B music- the most densely packed we had come across for this trip.We planned to take a bus to get back to HKG via Hengyang (衡陽) and Shenzhen . So we stopped for 2 nights at Hengyang and visited a few interesting sites which included The Hengyang City Park (衡陽生態公園) where we saw Big Head ! No idea who this guy was !

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Land Of The Three Kingdoms - 赤壁 And 荆州

Posted On Thursday, June 5, 2008 at at 10:36 PM by Alvin  

Along this part of the Yangtse lies the many famous cities and battle grounds during the Three Kingdoms. We visited the picturesque wall-city of Jingzhou (荆州) where we met some friendly people and visited a few eye-opening museums. The unassuming, down-a-back-alleyway Jingzhou (荆州) Museum was so rich in artifacts; it housed numerous fascinating ancient weapons and even a set of skeleton dating back to 2000 BC !On the other hand, although made famous by the many Three Kingdoms novels and the latest film - Chibi (Red Cliff, 赤壁), the battle site was a slight let-down as there was only a platform showcasing "the view" across the part of Yangtse, where supposedly the burning of the battle ships took place. The museum was informative though.

The following day we took a bus from Chibi to Yue Yang (岳陽) and we were greeted at the Chibi bus station by a gigantic Mao-era wall painting that must have been installed there at the bus station since the 60s', take a look !

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Yangtze's Famed Towers 江南名樓

Posted On Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at at 7:32 PM by Alvin  

Yellow Crane Tower (湖北黃鶴樓)

In the Province of Hubei (湖北), the mega-city of Wuhan (武漢) boasts one of the most famous towers in China - Yellow Crane Tower (黃鶴樓). A number of poems had been written about this tower which is located on the banks of The Yangtze (長江), for the past thousand years. Here is probably the most famous one:

黃鶴樓 - 崔顥

昔 人 已 乘 黃 鶴 去 ， 此 地 空 餘 黃 鶴 樓 。

黃 鶴 一 去 不 復 返 ， 白 雲 千 載 空 悠 悠 。

晴 川 歷 歷 漢 陽 樹 ， 芳 草 萋 萋 鸚 鵡 洲 。

日 暮 鄉 關 何 處 是 ， 煙 波 江 上 使 人 愁 。

We found Wuhan to be a huge and buzzling city with over 9 million residents but somehow the city had a welcoming persona and we had a very pleasant stay. We also ran into the Passage of the Olympic Torch Relay which caused a minor delay on our way to the peaceful East Lake (東湖).

Hunan Yue Yang Tower (湖南岳陽樓)
We moved on down South in to the Province of Hunan (湖南). In the friendly city of Yue Yang (岳陽), we spent a whole afternoon exploring the complex of Yue Yang Tower. The Tower was originally built as a naval tower where military officers oversaw the training of the Chinese navy on the lake shore of (洞庭湖). We had a relaxing time seeping tea from the nearby tea plantation (君山) which produces the famous tea - 君山銀針.

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