Hannah and I recently spent some time back in the UK, taking the much needed chance to see friends and family and generally remind ourselves what our home country is like. By the time we’d got back to China, we were raring to get back into the culture and life that we’ve made for ourselves here and decided that the best way to do this was to go on yet another mini break somewhere. China is a big country (the fourth largest in the world, behind Russia, Canada and the United States) so there was quite a bit of choice. We decided that we’d like to see some traditional Chinese scenery, the kind which traditional Chinese artists regularly depict in their paintings. Whilst this did narrow it down somewhat, it still left quite a wide area of choice. A quick jaunt on the Internet and we’d made our minds up; we were going to go to the Hunan Province and visit the remarkable quartz and sandstone peaks in the Zhangjiajie National Park. We found a web site that specialised in tours there and booked our trip.

We knew we’d made a good decision when we were making the final descent into Zhangjiajie airport. The runway is located in a valley between some spectacular mountain peaks, covered in forest, and when we had departed the plane and were standing on the runway, we had a clear view of a mountain with a hole in it. This wasn’t some small hole that had been weathered away, but a huge gaping gash in the mountainside. We quickly discovered that Russian fighter jets had put on a display sometime in the recent past and flown through this mountainous aperture to the delight of the many onlookers. If the scenery was going to be half as amazing as this, we were truly in for something special.

Since we arrived in early afternoon, our guides decided that we should waste no time and took us to see one of the sights. We were immediately taken to Yellow Dragon cave - a huge cavern carved into the mountainside featuring some of the most amazing stalagmites and stalactites anywhere in the world. It turned out that this was the second largest cave of this type anywhere in Asia (about 17 hectares in size), quite incredible when you think that Asia is the largest continent on Earth. It turned out that this cave had been accidentally discovered in the early 1980s by Chinese soldiers seeking refuge from the weather. By the early 1990s it had been opened to the public and remains to this day a truly phenomenal spectacle. The cave is decorated with lights of many different colours, making each stalagmite and stalactite seem like the largest piece of candy rock ever seen. We took a boat ride round the intricate maze of cave waterways, seeing as much as we could and ended the day wandering round and marvelling at the limestone formations that nature makes. We discovered that one cubic centimetre of stalagmite can take about a century to form and some of these were about 10-15 metres tall, making them unbelievably old. It took us about three hours to walk through all the little passageways and see as much of the cave as possible, and there are still some sections that are undergoing maintenance so that tourists will one day be able to view even more.

The following day saw us leave Zhangjiajie and embark on a four hour coach ride to Phoenix Town (Feng Huang Cheng). A four hour trip sounds like a huge chore, with nothing much to do except listen to music or catch forty winks. That’s exactly what I thought we would be in for and I couldn’t have been more wrong. The coach wound it’s way through some breathtaking scenery, travelling on small, scarcely maintained mountain roads, diving into valleys, over and around rice terraces and through small market towns, showing us a slice of what life is like in rural China. In one case we pulled over and spent some time wandering around one of these markets, and discovered that we, as westerners, were as interesting to the local Chinese people as they were to us.

The market itself was worth stopping at. It’s possible to find everything and anything you can think of here, all kinds of items are sold and almost every service is catered for, including a dental treatment. Underneath a small tarpaulin and wedged firmly in the mud (for it was raining now) sat a table loaded with dental implements and false teeth. In full view of all passers by sat a victim, sorry patient, being attended to by his dentist. Next to the patient was another man readying a needle full of what I hoped for the victims sake was some kind of anaesthetic. Waiting patiently by the table were either darkly curious spectators (me amongst them) or patients in the waiting room - not so much a room as the outside world, dull grey skies overhead and a muddy sludge underfoot. No one at all seemed perturbed by this, in fact taking it completely in their stride, the only exception being me, the slightly aghast westerner in the pack.

We arrived in Phoenix Town in early afternoon and took a boat ride around this quaint little town. I say quaint for want of a better word. It’s become part of the Chinese tourist trap and has tried to keep hold of its cultural heritage in the face of the ever expanding amount of foreign visitors. In some places they’ve managed this; people still wash their clothes in the river, for example. But a plethora of guest houses, raucous night clubs playing bleep-bleep techno music and tacky street shops have opened to make money from the many visitors and this slightly seedy part of tourism has tarnished what is otherwise a very pretty town. I suppose that’s the price that gets paid for the insatiable appetite of people wanting to see more of the world. Still, I enjoyed wandering around the back streets, ambling by the river and watching as locals and outsiders alike got on with their days.

Two days in Phoenix Town (more than enough for me) and I was looking forward to the next stop on our journey. We travelled up into the mountains where rice terraces are plentiful to stay at a remote village and sample life somewhere that really hasn’t been touched by the hand of tourism. We arrived to a fanfare of sorts, with the locals putting on a small dance show for us and then dressing a male and female from the group in their customary clothing (yes, I was the male chosen for this ritual). A huge scarf was tied in a very complex way to my head and a thick woollen jacket given to me to wear (for although we were in the warm south, being that we were at an altitude of about 600 metres it was quite cold) and photographs were taken of us with the villagers so that everyone could laugh at us (which they did). It was then time for food and it turned out that the chief of the village (as a quick aside we asked how the chief came to be the head of the village - was he born to it, for example? It turns out that he is elected to that position by the inhabitants of the area, ironic considering they live in a country with a communist government that is not elected) and his family had prepared a meal for us in their home. This is a very important part of Chinese social life and we were treated to traditional home cooking and proper Chinese toasting. The chief would come to each of our tables, pour us a healthy measure of home made rice wine and shriek “ganbei” (literal translation - “empty the glass”) before pouring all of the contents into his mouth. Naturally we had to follow suit; we were honoured guests and it is considered impolite to refuse the “ganbei” toast. The chief kept going from table to table toasting everyone and by the time we had to leave about two hours later, everyone was pretty drunk, especially the chief who began to side-step imaginary boulders and had to be supported to the bus so that he could see us off.

The final part of the tour meant driving all the way back to our starting point at Zhangjiajie (again through the unbelievable scenery - that’s one four hour drive I could never get enough of) so that we could go into the national park and gasp in wonder at the spectacle before us. There really is no way to describe the view when you enter the park, or the majesty of ascending 1300 metres in a cable car to look down on the tree covered valley floor where giant columns of sandstone stand tall and proud. We spent two days all told in the park; the first was spent in the sky, walking around the tops of the peaks and gazing into the green abyss below us. Then the second day was spent wandering around the valley floor, getting a horrible crick in the neck as we craned our heads skywards to look at the towering blocks looming over us. I tried to burn the images I saw permanently into my mind and I think I managed it. To be honest it wasn’t really that hard to do - anyone who finds it difficult to remember something that magnificent is probably blind. UNESCO recognised its splendour by placing it on the world heritage list in 1992. It really is that special. By the time we boarded our flight my jaw had to be reset having hung open for almost an entire week.