Yandang Mountain

Yandang Mountains is awesome, you should go visit. End of review.

Oh, you expect me to write more? It has been a few years since my visit and I hadn't even noticed it was on the Tentative list without any review. The listing is a little old - clocking in at almost 20 years without any update, the official description gives you some idea of the place but is still not very good, and there seems to be no movement on this becoming a World Heritage site since then.

The main attraction are the rock formations. To the average person, and thus most tourists, there isn't much detail going into the rock formations type being rhyolitic volcanic rocks. In fact the description is very, very geeky and a turnoff to read. Cretaceous revived caldera, Cenozoic, acidic magmatism, oh my. In-between all that they do mention what you see: mountain & water in harmony, beautiful water landscapes, and I suppose no mountain in China would be a proper mountain if not for temples and thus propelling this into a natural/cultural mixed site.

Arriving by train you get off at the appropriately named Yandang station. It is still a bit off from the park entrance (sorry I don't remember how I got there, probably a taxi). Inside there are two variations of things to do: rafting, similar to Wuyishan, and hiking along the rocks. The former I found rather second rate and I threw in a picture into the …