The Lakes of Jiuzhaiguo
According to sort-of-Chinese-Ted, and confirmed by really-Chinese-Ada, the Chinese believe the four most beautiful places in China, and thus the world (given that China is by far the most inward looking country on earth) are: the Great Wall of China, the karst scenery around Guilin and Yangshuo, the Huangshan mountain, and Jiuzhaiguo. Having visited the first two, and with the third not really in our immediate plans, we decided to use a few spare days last week to head to the fourth, Jiuzhaiguo National Park. It’s in the northwest of Sichuan province, and given the current closure of Tibetan areas to foreigners nearby to the park in both Sichuan and Gansu, you can only get there by air anyway, so we figured we might as well fly all the way from Guangzhou.
As the Chinese say: “If you want to see mountains, go to Huangshan; if you want to see water, go to Jiuzhaiguo.” Jiuzhaiguo consists of 114 stunning lakes – many a seemingly impossible blue, a few that are even multi-coloured – that shimmer and reflect the surrounding pine forests, and a few waterfalls as well. We spent two enjoyable days hiking around the park on well-made trails, and had them virtually to ourselves, since Chinese tourists will never walk when they can catch shuttle buses or cable cars, and there were only a handful of foreigners there. (I’m still trying to reconcile this image of the Chinese tourist, who will take a shuttle bus literally 200m from one stop to another rather than walk among the nature that they presumably came all the way here to see, and the Chinese who flock to city parks all over the country every day to use exercise equipment, dance and perform tai chi – how can a single people be so lazy and yet so physically proactive at the same time?)
We liked Jiuzhaiguo quite a lot, but I didn’t think it was quite as good as Zhangjiajie. Jiuzhaiguo is a very pretty place, but the canyons of Zhangjiajie were overwhelming, and had the ‘Wow!’ factor that Jiuzhaiguo was perhaps lacking. Having said that, we bumped into a Greek traveler who said Jiuzhaiguo was the most amazing place he had ever seen in his life. So, the usual rule applies: different people see and enjoy places in different ways, and that’s why we strive to visit them ourselves.
Tags: Asia, China, Jiuzhaiguo, lakes, Sichuan
Nick