Add Simon Winchester to the list of heavyweight writers recently filing stories from China. The New York Times has Winchester’s dispatch from Wulingyuan National Park. “This is central China,” he writes, “and a remote part of the mountains of northwestern Hunan province, until lately seldom visited and indeed until 50 years ago barely even settled.” The two main draws now: a two-mile, $200 million tunnel to ease access, and “one of the most remarkable geomorphological spectacles existing on our planet,” the sandstone pillars of Wulingyuan. 

Winchester writes:

As I drove there from the immense and grubby city of Chongqing, a hard day’s journey, I confess to having fairly low expectations. The weather was unpropitious, to say the least: it was raining hard, and a stiff westerly gale was blowing the stain of city pollution almost to the fringes of the park. I had been to countless other Chinese tourist sites before and had winced at how often the authorities seemed to render their charges into Asian versions of Gatlinburg or Blackpool or, at best, Disneyland.

But at that first sight of those soaring towers at the tunnel mouth, everything changed. (As did the weather: as if by an edict of the gods the wind eased, the rain softened until it had become no more than mist, and the summits of the pillars became wrapped in fronds of cloud as delicate as skeins of silk.)

The scenery in Wulingyuan turns out to be so immense and impressive, and yet so geologically frangible, that it seems positively to demand to be cared for.

Winchester also narrates a slideshow of amazing photos by Ariana Lindquist.

Related on World Hum:
* So Long, Forbidden City Starbucks. Help Us Pick a New Wonder.
* China on the Rise: Stories by Jeffrey Tayler and Peter Hessler

Photo from Wikipedia (GNU Free Documentation License).