72 hours in Hunan

The plank road

The ghost-valley plank road has a length of 800 meters, including a 60-meter glass skywalk span, and hangs from the cliff more than 1,400 meters above sea level on the upper side of the Ghost-valley Cave. The road is truly a heart-pounding experience.

Tianmen Mountain Temple

Tianmen Mountain Temple was first built in the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) as a center of Buddhism in western Hunan. The present Tianmen Mountain Temple was rebuilt on the basis of the original site in the official style of the Qing Dynasty (AD 1644-1911). It is located in a mountain hollow with a broad vista.

Day Two: Cultural tour of unique nations

After walking through the glass skywalk span on the 1,400-meter cliff, you may want to find inner calmness in Fenghuang Ancient Town. You can get there from Tianmen Mountain by a two-hour train or a three-hour coach.

Fenghuang Ancient Town is exceptionally well-preserved and harbors unique ethnic languages, customs, and arts as well as many distinctive structures of Ming and Qing styles.

The ancient town was built in 1704, and has 300 years of history. It was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on March 28, 2008 in the cultural category. The town is placed in a mountain setting, incorporating the natural flow of water into the city layout. Over half of the city's population belongs to the Miao or Tujia minorities.

The carefully laid red rock town walls, the stately and lofty town towers, the palace-style halls and residence and the delicate quadrangles as well as the civilian residences of various national styles are distributed along both sides of the streets.

There are over 200 ancient residential buildings in the ancient town zone, some 20 streets of various sizes, 10 ancient lanes and alleys, as well as ancient town walls, town gate towers, leaping rocks, wells, rainbow bridges, temples of literature and poetry, and ancestral temples, all of which are well preserved in their original states.