Zhangjiajie

Zhangjiajie (Gung chi chee) This was Randy's favorite day. They are called the Mystical Fairyland mountains is what they are called. It is famous because this is where the avatar movie was filmed. It was absolutely beautiful!  

The next day we went to another of the zhangjiajie mountains and walked across an open glass floor overlooking the striking mountains and took a gondola down. But to get up the mountain you walk on these really steep old steps that only go about 1/2 of your foot and about 1000 steps. You get scared turning around and looking where you are because you get tippy.  Then you take about a 20 minute escalator car up the mountain which just seems to keep going and going! And its steep like the mind the gap escalators in London. In the evening we went to an unbelievable show outdoors right in the middle of the mountains with props and lighting that you can't even describe. I've never seen a setting and production so fantastic as this one. I had to pinch myself and said a silent prayer during the evening of thanks.  I was in china, in the most majestic mountains I've ever seen watching a play with beautiful soul inspiring music and being blown away visually with the visual effects I've never seen before. At the end they have the two main characters on a rock about 75 feet high on this ledge and the rocks are somehow joined together and then they are lifted up the mountain and disappear. Which is how the story ends-they finally are together again after a 1000 years!  The translation into English is quite funny but our guide was insistent that it was translated correctly from the Chinese characters. Phrases like 'the moss was growing on the one side of the bedl (he said meaning it was a long time they were far apart) and praises like 'and the children went out to piss' or the lazy husband slept in bed while the wife got up to do work and laundry and cleaning.  The signs to the entrance of the park were funny too to us. It was a long list of 'rules'. Do not spend long time in public facilities, do not force foreigners to take group pictures with you, do not make petty advantages, if allergic to peanut do not eat (it was a package of peanuts)  It was here that foreigners were the most surprised by us and I even had people come up to me and ask if I could take a picture with them. One little girl was skipping with her mom and turned around to look at Randy and I running together one morning. She took one look and screamed as if she had never seen a white person before and her mom quickly started talking to her and then she smiled at us. We had so many stares from people looking at us running together. I think it was partly that we were white and partly that it was foreign for them to see a husband and wife running together. The norm is for the women to go out dancing together on the corner street after supper to be together and the men sit around and smoke and chat. Anyone can join in if we wanted to.