The Great Gateway of Tianmen Mountain
Living in Zhangjiajie city below Tianmen Mountain, I often find myself gazing at it from my balcony without thinking. From my observations, Tianmen Mountain shows a different face in every kind of weather: on cloudy days, its peaks and the Tianmen Cave are visible but darker in color, the verdant slopes appearing a deep blue-green...
This article is compiled from the original travel notes on the "Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network" (33519.com); it is a record of trips from earlier years. Time-sensitive information such as ticket prices, schedules, and accommodation prices is subject to the latest announcements from scenic areas and transportation authorities; the itinerary ideas and attraction introductions still have reference value.
Living in the Zhangjiajie urban area at the foot of Tianmen Mountain, every day on my own balcony I would unintentionally gaze at Tianmen Mountain from afar.
According to my observations, Tianmen Mountain shows a different face in different weather: on cloudy days, the peaks of Tianmen Mountain and Tianmen Cave can be seen, but their colors are rather dark, and the verdant green all over the mountain appears in a dark blue-black hue. On rainy or foggy days, Tianmen Mountain is only a blur, or even completely covered, with nothing visible at all. Only on clear days, especially just after rain when the sky clears, does Tianmen Mountain appear at its clearest. At such times, because heaven has just washed its face and the clouds and mist have just dispersed, its features are revealed vividly. The towering peaks, the oval-shaped Tianmen Cave, and the verdant green all over the mountain all come into view one by one, and even the tiny yellow scars left by a few landslides are fully exposed.
The most spectacular day for Tianmen Mountain was December 11, 1999. On that day, more than a hundred thousand spectators gathered below Tianmen Mountain, all craning their necks to watch the airplane flight through Tianmen Cave. At that time, I sat on my own balcony and also watched Tianmen Mountain intently for several hours. The world-class aerobatic masters, one after another, piloted glider planes, circling and dancing in the sky and constantly changing their maneuvers in performance. These planes sometimes resembled eagles spreading their wings, sometimes sparrows turning over, sometimes wild geese flying level, making one truly dazzled. In an instant, plane after plane began shooting like arrows toward Tianmen Cave. At this moment people's hearts rose to their throats, and everyone was sweating for the performers. Fortunately, those pilots all piloted their planes smoothly through Tianmen Cave, and some even performed a two-plane entry into the cave. They all flew over Tianmen safely. This performance undoubtedly made Tianmen Mountain known to everyone under heaven.
Afterward, in March 2006, Tianmen Mountain once again held a Russian fighter jet performance. This time, because there was no flight through Tianmen Cave, its momentum was far less lively than the previous one, and watching it was not heart-stirring either, but the eyes of Chinese people were still drawn once again, and the fame of Tianmen Mountain was of course further raised.
In fact, even without these two flight performances, Tianmen Mountain's fame would still be very high. Because people will always remember the several historical events that made Tianmen Mountain known throughout the world.
One is that in the sixth year of Yong'an of Wu in the Three Kingdoms period (263 AD), the karst cave of Tianmen Mountain collapsed, piercing through the eye of heaven. King Sun Xiu of Wu considered this an auspicious sign and therefore bestowed the name "Tianmen Mountain." The origin of the name Tianmen Mountain comes from this. The second is that Tianmen Mountain has a cave, and folk legend says that Guiguzi once lived in seclusion in the Tianmen Mountain cave and practiced there, and moreover, on the wall in the cave there were painted characters like seal script, bizarre and indecipherable. These characters may have been left by Guiguzi. Because Guiguzi was a famous historical figure, once this matter spread, it added a layer of mystery to Tianmen Mountain. The third is the legend about Zhang Liang, the Marquis of Liu of the Han dynasty, "roaming with Master Red Pine" at Tianmen Mountain, which was spread among the people in a very mysterious way. The Yongding County Gazetteer once recorded: "Zhang Liang roamed with Master Red Pine; in the county, traces remain at the famous mountains Tianmen and Qingyan." Local folk legend also says that Shennong's rain master Master Red Pine once lived in seclusion at Tianmen Mountain refining cinnabar, and to this day more than ten sites remain at Tianmen Mountain, including Chisong Mountain, Chisong Stream, Chisong Flat, Chisong Rock, and Danzao Peak. The fourth is that in the early years of the Yuan dynasty, a Shu official named Wang Shen, ashamed to eat Yuan salary, fled to Tianmen Mountain and, with the donation of the local notable Tian Xilu, established Tianmen Academy. The opening of this academy not only cultivated a large number of educated talents, but also greatly spread the reputation of Tianmen Mountain. At that time, most students studying at Tianmen Academy wrote poems chanting Tianmen Mountain, and therefore during the Chenghua period of the Ming dynasty, the Tianmen Mountain Collection was once published, and Tianmen Mountain culture was thereby spread to the world. In a corner of Xiangxi, if one asks which famous mountain has been praised and chanted most in poetry by literati of successive dynasties, one can say that Tianmen Mountain undoubtedly ranks first.
Tianmen Mountain has a long cultural history, and its scenery is marvelous and worth seeing, but its peak of more than 1,500 meters was very difficult to climb in the past. In 2006, the Zhangjiajie urban area opened the world's longest cableway, making travel to Tianmen Mountain very convenient. Now, with the continuous rise of the Zhangjiajie tourism urban area, I believe that in the future Tianmen Mountain, with its incomparably wondrous charm, will surely attract more and more tourists' favor!