Land of Avatar 21-28 Sep 2013

张家界 ZhangJiaJie, situated at west of Hunan Province (湘西) is where Avatar, Journey to the West (西游记) and many other movies are filmed!  The tall, beautiful, majestic, natural ‘floating’ rocks have attracted not only many local tourists but also hordes of Koreans to pay homage to this World Natural Heritage (世界自然遗产).  ZhangJiaJie is Korean’s back garden! Everywhere we go, we see signage in Chinese and Korean. There is a Chinese & Korean jointly invested and biggest ever McDonald restaurant, Mcafe on top of the mountain 天子山.  We fondly remembered the ride on the 335m tall German made elevator 百龙天梯 and the stroll on the boardwalk at the Grand Canyon大峡谷.  The cave 黄龙洞 was just ok.
 
West of Hunan is also home of the Miao/Hmong tribe 苗族 - a hardworking, tough, clever people who adore silver, embroidery, songs, ginger candy and dried meat 腊肉.  Phoenix old town 凤凰古城, the most western part of Hunan is packed with shops along small alleys and the river. In and around west of Hunan 湘西, we observed wild roasted chestnut, pomegranate and kiwi were in abundance.  We learnt that 湘西 was home of famous singer宋祖英 and writer 沈从文, 熊希龄.
 
Prior ZhangJiaJie, we stopped by and leisurely explored Guangzhou city广州市and Changsha city长沙市. Though the rain has lessened our comfort and the bus journeys to ZhangJiaJie and Phoenix town were very long, we still have had a good time and my sister was very pleased with her great buy - beautifully embroidered cushion cover with a flavor of 苗族 and 凤凰古城！