Thundering waters

About a kilometer upstream from the Grand Waterfall is the Thundering Waterfall.

It's Huangguoshu's loudest and widest at 105 meters wide. Yet it's only 21 meters high.

It drains a 1,500-square-meter karst pond upstream.

Xu Xiake recalled locating the cataract by sound rather than sight: "I heard the rumbling water from afar and saw a gap between the hills to the north. The water was rushing from the mountaintop in the northeast, vehemently whooshing into an abyss."

While waterfalls remain Huangguoshu's main attraction, the Grand and Thundering cascades steal the show.

Rather than view the other 16 falls, most visitors trek to the Tianxing Stone Scenic Area.

Here, rather than plummeting from above, the water stands motionless below the rocks to reflect an aquatic doppelganger of the flora-fleeced stones that jut skyward.

The area is traversed by hopping 365 steppingstones.

These dollops of rock plopped into the wetlands are each stamped with a plate indicating a date in the year. Visitors hunt for the stones that correspond with their birthdays to make wishes.

The surrounding karst formations bristle with coiled ferns, knobby cactuses, cascading vines, fleecy moss and bamboo plumes. Roots clutch rocks like raptors clasping their prey.

Sites here have such names as "Stone of Evolutionary Spirit", "Evergreen Gorge" and "Root for Human Race", in which the roots of a tree vaguely trace the Chinese character for "person" (ren).

Gaolaozhuang is where the mythical General Pig from the epic story Journey to the West is said to have carried off the woman he made his wife.

Miao vendors clad in traditional attire hawk sugarcane slices, yams and cucumbers from woven baskets that dangle from shoulder poles. Younger men in modern garb sell geodes, crystals and fossils.

Their presences reaffirm that Huangguoshu is a place where unique cultures populate some of the most distinctive topographical formations the country sires.

Contact the writer at erik_nilsson@chinadaily.com.cn.