THE TRIP: Day 2

So apparently Zhangjiajie, where I spent two days travelling, is where the movie “Avatar” was filmed in. I would be surprised if the place wasn’t used for a film, because the view there was AWESOME. I highly encourage you to take a trip there if you’re up for seeing nature’s grand piece of art. It’s actually supposed to take about ten days to look around all the scenic areas of Zhangjiajie. However, since our trip was only for three days with one day spent in Changsha, we only got to visit two famous places there—Tianmen Mountain and Tianzi Mountain.

On the second day of our trip, we bought our tickets for the cable car up to Tianmen Mountain. We were able to get a cheaper price by buying the ticket through the hotel we stayed at. We left the hotel and found some local food to eat for breakfast, then walked to the cable car station. We were really excited because it was supposed to be the “longest passenger cableway of high mountains in the world”. Surely, the view from inside the cable car was so awesome we took hundreds of pictures on the way up. It was the most beautiful scenery I had seen in my life.

 

 

 

When we got to the end of the cableway, we got off and toured around the top of the mountain. Several scenic sites were scattered here and there, so we sometimes had to walk, take an elevator, or take another cable car. Even travelling from one spot to another was so nice because we were surrounded by the nature the whole time.

 

 

 

 

One of the most exciting sites was the glass pathway that surrounds part of the mountain. I was so nervous before going up on it, but it was not as scary as I thought. I even thought it was too short so I talked my friends into walking back the way we came. The second time, we took time looking down through the glass floor and taking pictures.

 

 

 

We were planning on stopping to see the Tianmen Cave, which is a natural arch in the mountain, but it started to drizzle and we got too tired, so we took the cable car back down the mountain. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a restaurant to get the famous local food there for dinner. It was some type of huoguo (hot pot) where you put in the ingredients you want.

 

 

Our next schedule was to go see a famous musical called “Tianmen(Door to Heaven) Fox Fairy” at the Tianmen mountain area. Around 8pm, we rode with some random people in a van—which was arranged by the hotel but was still very sketchy—and passed very rocky roads till we finally arrived at the musical performance ground. I had no idea what kind of musical it was until I walked in, but even in the dark, I soon realized that the scale of this musical was going to be huge. The stage was built like a real village, and the back of the stage was surrounded by huge mountain cliffs.

Although the musical was performed in Chinese, the story was pretty easy to follow and subtitles were provided in three languages—Chinese, English, and Korean. Surprisingly, the technologies they used during the play were very sophisticated. It’s no wonder that so many directors and staffs were needed to arrange the musical. The songs were also really beautiful and addictive.

After seeing the performance, we decided to go to a massage shop and get foot massages for our tired feet and legs. Even though the hotel lady recommended the massage shop to us, we found the place kind of weird and sexual because all the female masseurs were wearing miniskirts. We got good massages anyway and came back to our hotel to get a good night’s rest.