Zhangjiajie Mountains cannot be understood, encompass or pronounce. Only the imagination explains them because this landscape is an invention, a weightless joke from nature, that inspired James Cameron to recreate his impossible world in "Avatar". Those Pandora air mountains also have their avatar on Earth, In the Chinese province of Hunan.
We arrived tired, After getting away from cities and highways. We were hungry for the wind of the valleys and the green tree. We stayed in a hostel to which the shower lacked, the toilet and even the "good morning" paper of the employees, But we wanted to walk through one of the most amazing natural parks in Asia. We draw the cameras and sharp the pupils, With the brightness of an extraordinary expectation. And we saw nothing.
Those Pandora air mountains also have their avatar on Earth, In the Chinese province of Hunan.
We had traveled hundreds of kilometers and we had even promoted in the highest and fastest elevator in the world that goes up as a shot by one of the mountains, But the peaks had been taken by a fog that was not whitish, but white, To blind the illusions. A day was elusive, evil and when we peeked to the viewpoints, The abysses that we were abyssals had disappeared. The only vertigo was provided by the echo of our voices when shouting to the mountains. The rest was a mist so thick that it barely allowed to see the path where legions of tourists walked.
We hope at a high point to see if the wind took our bad luck and patience rewarded us with the fleeting image of a mountain that was lost down and made me take a step back, finally aware of the cliff we had looked out. That rock stretched fine as a column of three hundred meters that nothing sustains and whose base takes centuries announcing a collapse that has not just arrived.
The only vertigo was provided by the echo of our voices when shouting to the mountains.
We toured several points of the park, Looking for frames between thickness. In one of the viewpoints we finally achieved a visible picture of the orgy of pointed mountains, Erect in balance on forests. In a tiny space, tourists were overcrowded, almost all Chinese, delivered to that fashion of holding a stick connected to the mobile to become self -portraits. I observed how people approached the only viewpoint where the fog gave a truce. They arrived without dedicating just a look at the wonder they had. Then they turned their backs on the mountains and photos were taken with the satisfied gesture of a collector. They checked the outcome of the photograph and left the viewpoint without even saying goodbye.
Some have ended up confusing the reality of a unique landscape with a computer -generated photo.
Those were the most sensitive to landscape, since there was an even more indolent tourist class. On a sides of the viewpoint, They had arranged a panel with a photograph of what the views himself offered in view right in front. Many tourists were planted in front of the poster and a park photographer portray them with the panel behind, a landscape that could enjoy with all their reality moving four steps further. After, in a flaunt how to ruin a photo already in case false, The photographer added by computer one of the blue characters of the movie "Avatar" that posed next to the smiling tourist on duty. Some visitors, observed, They never saw the landscapes of Zhangjiajie. I wanted to be something very Chinese. The artifice constitutes a way of life for many of the inhabitants of the country. Much of the society succumbs to neon lights, to the stone cardboard facades, to the wrapper in the windows, To television fiction, To shopping centers or marketing. They are such appetizing concepts for the Chinese that some have ended up confusing the reality of a unique landscape with a photo generated by computer.
We did see these landscapes, At least we intuit their peaks and profiles. And it was enough to feel his magic.
It is possible that Zhangjiaj cannot be understood, neither cover nor pronounce, But even with the fog, breaking into its mountains, This is a place that cannot be forgotten.
