Zhangjiajie National Forest Park
Encyclopedia
Zhangjiajie
Zhangjiajie is a prefecture-level city in the northwestern part of Hunan province in China. It comprises the district of Yongding and counties of Cili and Sangzhi...
City in northern Hunan
Hunan
' is a province of South-Central China, located to the south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting...
Province in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
. It is one of several national parks within the Wulingyuan Scenic Area
Wulingyuan
Wulingyuan is a scenic and historic interest area in Hunan Province, China, noted for its approximately 3,100 tall quartzite sandstone pillars, some of which are over in height and are a type of karst formation. The site is in the Zhangjiajie City and lies about from Changsha, the capital of...
.
History
In 1982 it was recognized as China's first national forest park (4,810 hectares). Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is part of a much larger (397.5 km²) Wulingyuan Scenic AreaWulingyuan
Wulingyuan is a scenic and historic interest area in Hunan Province, China, noted for its approximately 3,100 tall quartzite sandstone pillars, some of which are over in height and are a type of karst formation. The site is in the Zhangjiajie City and lies about from Changsha, the capital of...
. In 1992, Wulingyuan was officially recognized as a UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
World Heritage Site. It was then approved by the Ministry of Land and Resources as Zhangjiajie Sandstone Peak Forest National Geopark (3,600 km²) in 2001. In 2004, Zhangjiajie Geopark was listed as a UNESCO Global Geopark.
The most notable geographic features of the park are the pillar
Column
A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. For the purpose of wind or earthquake engineering, columns may be designed to resist lateral forces...
-like formations that are seen throughout the park. They are the result of many years of erosion
Erosion
Erosion is when materials are removed from the surface and changed into something else. It only works by hydraulic actions and transport of solids in the natural environment, and leads to the deposition of these materials elsewhere...
. The weather is moist year round, and as a result, the foliage is very dense. Much of the erosion which forms these pillars are the result of expanding ice in the winter and the plants which grow on them. These formations are a distinct hallmark of Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
landscape, and can be found in many ancient Chinese painting
Chinese painting
Chinese painting is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. The earliest paintings were not representational but ornamental; they consisted of patterns or designs rather than pictures. Early pottery was painted with spirals, zigzags, dots, or animals...
s.
One of the park's quartz
Quartz
Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...
-sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
pillars, the 3,544-foot Southern Sky Column, had been officially renamed "Avatar Hallelujah Mountain" (阿凡达-哈利路亚山, pinyin: Āfándá hālìlùyà shān) in honor of the eponymous film in January 2010. According to park officials, photographs from Zhangjiajie inspired the floating Hallelujah Mountains seen in the film. The film's director and production designers said that they drew inspiration for the floating rocks from mountains from around the world, including those in the Hunan province.