Some landscapes seem impossible, and Zhangjiajie is one of them. Thousands of quartz sandstone columns, some more than two hundred metres tall, rise straight up from the forest floor like the pillars of a colossal temple. They are crowned with pines and wrapped in wisps of mist that make them seem to float. It's no coincidence that these mountains inspired the 'floating mountains' of the planet Pandora in James Cameron's film 'Avatar': here, reality outdoes science fiction. When the haze rises from the valleys and the pillars appear and disappear among the clouds, it feels like being inside a Chinese ink painting that has come to life.
Zhangjiajie is, above all, a destination for nature and for vertigo. Besides the maze of pillars in the National Forest Park, it has some of China's most spectacular, adrenaline-filled attractions. There's the world's tallest outdoor elevator, built against a cliff. There's Tianmen Mountain, with its giant 'Heaven's Gate' opening in the rock and its glass walkways hanging over the abyss. And there's the Grand Canyon glass bridge, one of the longest and highest on the planet. It's a place made for marvelling and for testing your stomach.
This guide covers the best of Zhangjiajie with a practical eye. It explains how to plan your visit to the vast Forest Park and Wulingyuan without getting lost or worn out, how to get up Tianmen Mountain and which internal transport to use. It also covers how the multi-day tickets work and what you need to know about bookings, prices and the VPN before you arrive. Because of its size and its crowds, it takes a bit more planning than other destinations, but it rewards you with some of the most astonishing landscapes in all of China.
Unlike China's great imperial cities, Zhangjiajie isn't a destination for history and monuments but for nature: its real 'history' is geological. Its thousands of quartz sandstone pillars formed over hundreds of millions of years. Ancient marine sediments were lifted up, and then water, ice and roots wore away the rock until only the toughest columns were left. For centuries this remote, mountainous region was home to ethnic minorities such as the Tujia, the Miao and the Bai, who farmed the valleys. It stayed fairly isolated and little known until 1982, when China's first national forest park was created here. In 1992, UNESCO declared the Wulingyuan area a World Heritage Site for its exceptional natural value. Worldwide fame arrived in 2009-2010, when the idea spread that these pillars had inspired the landscape of 'Avatar'. Since then, Zhangjiajie has become one of China's most visited natural destinations. The full story, from the geology to the minorities and the tourism boom, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Cantonese and karst south: the trading gateway of Canton, colonial Hong Kong and its return, the peaks of the Li River at Guilin and the stone pillars of Zhangjiajie.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The real story of Zhangjiajie doesn't begin with people but with the Earth, and it spans hundreds of millions of years. Around 380 million years ago, in the Devonian period, this whole region of south-central China lay under a warm, shallow sea. Thick layers of sand settled on its floor, one on top of another, and over time pressure and minerals compacted them into a massive platform of quartz sandstone several hundred metres thick. Quartz sandstone is an especially hard, quartz-rich rock.
Later, movements of the Earth's crust lifted that seabed and turned it into high dry land. That's when nature's slow work as a sculptor began. Rain and river water seeped into the vertical cracks in the rock. Ice, which expands as it freezes, helped, and so did tree roots and changes in temperature. Over millions of years these forces widened the fractures, split the rock mass into blocks and then split the blocks into ever slimmer columns. The hard sandstone held up better than the softer layers, and so more than three thousand vertical pillars and spires were left standing, some of them over two hundred metres tall.
The result is an extremely rare and spectacular landform, different from the limestone karst of Guilin: a 'stone forest' of quartz sandstone. Lush vegetation clings to the tops and sides of the pillars, and for most of the year they are bathed in moisture that rises from the valleys as mist. When that mist wraps around the columns and only their pine-crowned tops show, the landscape seems to float among the clouds. This is the natural wonder that, much later, would amaze the whole world.
For almost all of human history, this rugged, mountainous region of western Hunan stayed far from China's great centres of power. The imperial dynasties flourished on the fertile plains. These steep, forested mountains were hard to cross and remained on the margins, home mainly to non-Han ethnic minorities: above all the Tujia, but also the Miao (Hmong) and the Bai. Each people had its own language, customs, music, wooden architecture and traditions.
These communities lived from mountain farming and from hunting and gathering in the valleys, in villages of wooden houses. They often lived semi-independently of the imperial administration, which governed these remote areas indirectly through hereditary local chiefs. The city's own name, Zhangjiajie, means something like 'the domain of the Zhang family', after a local clan; the word 'jie' refers to these territorial divisions of the minority peoples. It was a cultural frontier, and over the centuries it saw rebellions and resistance to sinicisation.
For the people of these mountains, the stone pillars, caves and peaks were not a tourist attraction. They were home, a sacred landscape full of legends. Some mountains were seen as places of spiritual power, such as Tianmen ('the Gate of Heaven') with its enormous natural opening. According to tradition, Tianzi Mountain ('the Mountain of the Son of Heaven') takes its name from a Tujia rebel leader who proclaimed himself king on these heights. For centuries, the astonishing landscape of Zhangjiajie was known only to those who lived among its pillars.
Zhangjiajie's landscape stayed almost unknown to the Chinese public, let alone the rest of the world, until well into the second half of the 20th century. The area was remote and hard to reach, with no tourist infrastructure. The turning point came in the 1970s and 1980s, when Chinese artists, photographers and landscape painters began visiting the region. The images they shared of its misty pillars showed the country a natural treasure that looked as if it came straight out of a classical ink painting. Those photographs caused a sensation.
Official recognition followed quickly. In 1982 the Chinese government declared the area the country's first national forest park: Zhangjiajie National Forest Park. It was a milestone in modern China's young nature conservation policy. It laid the groundwork for protecting the landscape while gradually opening it up to tourism. Over the following years the neighbouring areas of Tianzi and Suoxiyu were also protected, forming the large scenic area of Wulingyuan.
International recognition came in 1992, when UNESCO added the Wulingyuan area to the World Heritage List for its outstanding natural value. It highlighted the area's extraordinary concentration of quartz sandstone pillars, as well as its canyons, streams, caves and rich biodiversity. From then on, Zhangjiajie began to appear on the map of Chinese and international tourism. Access was improved, and paths, viewpoints and cable cars were built. In time came some of the most spectacular and controversial engineering projects in Chinese tourism.
Zhangjiajie's big leap to worldwide fame came through film. In 2009 James Cameron's 'Avatar' was released, and its spectacular floating 'Hallelujah Mountains' on the planet Pandora looked strikingly like Zhangjiajie's misty pillars. The film's team drew on several karst and mountain landscapes in China, and Huangshan in Anhui has also been mentioned. There is no single official source. Even so, the Zhangjiajie local authorities eagerly claimed the connection. In 2010 they officially renamed the 'Southern Sky Column' on the Yuanjiajie plateau as 'Avatar Hallelujah Mountain', and the film became an accidental marketing campaign of incalculable value.
The effect was immediate and overwhelming. Zhangjiajie had been a destination known mainly to Chinese travellers. Now it drew visitors from all over the world who wanted to see 'the Avatar mountains', and visitor numbers soared. To manage that success, and to amplify it, the region invested in a series of ever more spectacular and dizzying attractions. These include the Bailong Elevator, the world's tallest outdoor elevator, built against a cliff face, and the glass walkways and viewpoints on the edge of the precipices of Tianmen Mountain. In 2016 came the Grand Canyon glass bridge, designed by an Israeli architect and one of the longest and highest on the planet.
Today Zhangjiajie is one of China's great natural destinations and a mass-tourism phenomenon, with millions of visitors a year. That success has brought challenges too: huge crowds in high season, queues for the park's internal transport, pressure on a fragile ecosystem, and a debate over how much 'thrill-seeking' engineering belongs in a protected natural landscape. Still, when the mist rises through the valleys and thousands of pillars appear and vanish among the clouds, the spectacle that nature took three hundred million years to sculpt still takes your breath away.
