Aizhai and Dehang
Aizhai is the most perilous highway passage on the Hunan-Sichuan route and a famous marvel of highway construction in Hunan's transportation history. Driving 24 kilometers from Jishou toward Huayuan, you'll see this towering mountain blocking the view ahead. Aizhai Mountain is about a thousand meters high, with two sister peaks standing at its midsection. The highway passes between the peaks, then winds upward in a spiral...
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.
Aizhai is the most perilous highway passage on the Xiangchuan route and a famous highway construction wonder in the history of Hunan transportation. Driving 24 kilometers from Jishou toward Huayuan, you can see this towering mountain lying across the view ahead. Aizhai Mountain is about a thousand meters high. On its mountainside stand two sister peaks, and the highway passes between them, then winds upward further. The road rises in a horizontal "8" shape, passing under a stone bridge and then looping back to spiral upward over the stone bridge, winding through 14 major bends in this way, as if threading back and forth through the clouds. At this point, if you stretch your head out the window, you see only a sheer drop of ten thousand feet below your feet, and you cannot help but feel terrified, afraid that something might happen to the car. In fact, the road surface of the Aizhai Highway has now generally been widened from the previous seven meters to eight or nine meters, visibility at the turns has been expanded from the previous 20 meters to 60 meters, and the road surface is fully paved with asphalt, so the safety factor for driving has been greatly improved compared with the past.
The Aizhai Highway was first built in 1936. At that time, it was a major transportation artery built by the Kuomintang for the War of Resistance. The design engineer for the Aizhai Highway was Huang Renlong, a native of Yongshun. He graduated from the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at Hunan University in his early years and served as chief engineer on the Guizhou-Guangxi Railway. It is said that when Mr. Huang Renlong surveyed and designed the Aizhai Highway, he encountered a difficult problem at a section of cliff on the mountainside, and it was a local peasant woman's reminder that led him to invent this horizontal "8"-shaped road. After this section was designed and built, it caused a sensation at the time, and two American universities even collected a model of this section of road.
Because the Aizhai Highway has many bends and is perilous, and because during construction the road surface was carved out of cliffs entirely with primitive tools, as many as more than 240 road workers died in the line of duty. Their names are all engraved on a monument beside the highway at the top of the mountain. After the Aizhai Highway was completed, it played a major role in changing the backward transportation of western Hunan. More than sixty years have passed, and this road is still delivering enormous benefits, with as many as a thousand vehicles passing through Aizhai every day.
The Dehang Scenic Area, closely connected with the Aizhai Highway, is a famous tourist destination in the Jishou area. Walking from Aizhai Village at the foot of the mountain into Dehang, you see crisscrossing streams, beautiful peaks, dense mountain forests, and plunging waterfalls. The highest, Liusha Waterfall, is 216 meters tall; when the water is abundant, visiting here is extremely spectacular. Pangu Peak in Dehang has a single path by which one can climb up, and at its summit ancient trees reach the sky and the scenery is picturesque. More than ten years ago, on a day in the twelfth lunar month, I visited Dehang and climbed Pangu Peak. Beneath the cliffs, I also saw blooming wintersweet flowers one after another; those pink and white blossoms blooming proudly in the cold looked extremely gorgeous and moving.
In the Dehang Scenic Area there are also more than 100 Miao village households. After seeing the sights, experiencing Miao life in a Miao home is also very interesting. The Miao people are generally very warm and hospitable. Miao-style dishes such as sour meat, sour fish, sour chili, and sour glutinous rice will surely whet your appetite and make you praise them endlessly.