Yunnan, the land of Southern Cloud well known for its beautiful natural wonders and unique local culture of many tribes, was chosen by my Chinese Language Club for this year field trip. After wonderful experience from my last year Shanxi trip, I decided to join this program immediately and back to China again.

From all natural wonders of Yunnan, Shilin or Stone Forest, a part of South China Karst, seemed to be the most famous tourist attraction, located not far from Kunming, the capital and gateway of Yunnan, by superhighway in just 1.30 hours. Shilin was a fantasy land of complex bizarre gigantic stones in the beautiful well designed stylish park. With the hefty entrance fee of 175 Yuan, as of 2010, Shilin was still full with Chinese tourists who came to see their "national scenic area".

I was quite surprised to discover that Shilin was located next to the modern city of the same name and had asphalt road rounded Shilin to serve tourists for utmost convenient. However, the paths inside Shilin were really confusing and small, under the shadow of the rocks; all turns showed the different angle of labyrinthine strange stones and pretty ponds. The center point of Shilin was the small Chinese pavilion built on the top of one rock for view grazing; the view was quite nice and made me understand where the idea of stone decoration in Chinese garden came from.

Even though this was not my first time to see karsts or stone forest, I was really impressed with Shilin especially its size and the way Chinese turned this place into the beautiful garden. While in my feeling toward Shilin as a natural WHS was quite reluctant since I hardly thought this place was a Mother Nature creation, but as a big man made Chinese garden that fittingly in cultural site category making Shilin to be one of the most complicated place I had seen and felt.