What a disappointment even with my low expectations for rock art in general. A lot has changed since the site has been inscribed and the town of Ningming has really been placed on the map. Known to local tourists before, the town has been upgraded with rock art copies to decorate lamp posts, supermarket roofs, even the factory chimneys, with the cutest one at the tunnel entrance to the scenic area that has the world heritage symbol as rock art alongside the stickmen/women found on the walls.

TIC, or This Is China, refers to the fact that things change quickly here. Before one would have to find an obscure boat hire service to take you to see the rocks, then there was a ferry service twice a day, now there are regular tours from Zhulian Ferry Port every half an hour on weekends, and this was already early November.

I regret not going directly to the scenic area onky a few kilometers further in because the ferry service is slow and you spend a maximum 10 minutes looking at one of the walls, with many rocks walls covered with scaffolding where they still do plenty of research on the art. There are some individual drawings on the way but it takes a good 45 minutes to the place they stop. They in fact spend more time stopping at the local village for the inevitable shopping, mainly fruit and snacks. The images at the port and even the entrance ticket make it seem as one can actually step on a nice wooden boardwalk in front of the art wall but this is in fact a misconception. The boardwalk is there but not accessible, and probably never was invented to be? You can see the art fine from the boat but it obviously feels misleading.

I talk of regret without knowing what the scenic area offers instead, but for the short duration of seeing the rock art I would probably not take a ferry ride and risk the disappointment at the other area without the 3h waste of time on a “leisure” cruise where everyone picnics, and while the scenic views are nice this is nothing compared to Guilin and North Vietnam. If only another visitor would have correct information. Guide books still talk about the old ferries costing 35 RMB... The tour explains some icons but I got more info from the CCTV-1 program showing clips on the TV. You also see more of the rock art but I suppose one wants to see the real deal else we would be looking at pictures of every place to visit and be done in a day.

So what makes this rock art so special? There's always the “most”, “tallest”, “oldest” criteria which for me is a non-factual argument that shouldn't fly. They discovered older art in Indonesia already. I am in favor of these nations at the UN to sit together and compare their findings or review if the rock art is actually unique. I found the ones in Denmark already just passable, France and Spain very much not, and then there are several unlisted places like Indonesia that may even be more unique than those. And if you do inscribe on superlatives than be prepared to be delisted.

I would give this place half a star for the presentation but i believe there is something great about the large amount and how the people placed it on the wall so high, abseiling from the top or if the water level was so much higher than why there is rock art at the bottom areas too? A lot of rock art is unreadable or half washed away. I am of course a little bit biased having seen heaps of rock art before. I did think it was rather smart how some of these were painted to throw a tool on top to most likely symbolise the person's job or status.

Logistic-wise I recommend taking a 2h bus from Nanning Jiangnan Station which is connected by the metro to not only the center but also all the way east to the other coach station, Longdong, and the east fast train station, or take a bus directly from Longdong which takes 3h and is not very frequent. If you come from Vietnam you stop at the old station in Ningming which is slightly closer to Huashan than the coach station but still requires transportation by taxi or motorbike. I don't recommend the train onward to Nanning because it's so much slower and less comfortable and hardly worth the cheaper ticket price.