The city itself was previously named Dayong (大庸), and has a recorded history dating back to 221 BC. In 1992, the national forest park in the Wulingyuan Scenic Area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the new name of Zhangjiajie City was adopted in 1994. The national forest park had been given the name of Zhangjiajie after the name of a small village located within its bounds, and is now a popular tourist attraction within the park.
We arrived in Zhangjiajie from Changde just before lunch. After a quick lunch in one of the local restaurant, we decided to visit the Yellow Dragon Cave before checking into our hotel.
The cave is huge and takes about 3 hours to complete, which includes a 10 mins ride in an electric powered boat. There are thousands of steps to climb and can be very steep at certain sections of the cave. What you can to see are beautiful stalactites and stalagmites.
As usual, after purchasing your tickets, you will have to make your way through tourist shops before you get to the entrance of the cave.
The area after the exit from the cave is also quite beautiful and scenic and is worth spending a bit of time exploring.
After checking into our hotel (Country Home Phoenix Hotel, a 5 stars hotel with 1,000 rooms), we proceeded to Zhangjiajie City for dinner.
After our breakfast, we drove to the Wulingyuan Scenic area to visit the Tianzi Mountain and the Yuanjiajie Scenic Area (which supposedly inspire the Avatar movie).
First, you will have to take the cable car to get up to the Tianzi Mountain. After the Tianzi Mountain, it takes another bus ride to get to the Yuanjiajie Scenic Area.
Finally, another bus ride to get to the glass lift to descend the mountain.
On our last day in Zhangjiajie, we visited the Baofeng Lake before leaving for Fenghuang. The boat ride last only about 30 mins.
We left Zhangjiajie at about 2pm but instead of going straight to Fenghuang (Phoenix Ancient Town), our chinese friend suggested that we visit this place called Furong first (also an ancient town with a beautiful waterfall) and stay there for a night before proceeding to Fenghuang.
The photos below are of this shop (next to the restaurant we had lunch in) making rice wine. We bought some rice wine from them as they are really good for cooking chicken dishes.
All images shot with the Nikon D810 with Nikkor 24-120mm f4g lens, processed in Adobe Lightroom CC and Photoshop.
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