One Stick of Incense
A towering pillar.
Wimwamble — CC BY-SA 4.0 · HoweyYuan — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Liuxingy — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Liuxingy — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wimwamble — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Liuxingy — CC BY-SA 4.0 · 图片上传者：吴显胜（China） — CC BY 3.0 · 图片上传者：吴显胜（China） — CC BY 3.0
A great canyon in the mountains of western Hubei, about 35 kilometres long, that brings together almost every karst form: soaring cliffs, rock pillars, deep sinkholes, caves, natural arches, underground rivers and hanging valleys, making it one of the most striking landscapes of central China. The canyon has two areas: Qixingzhai on the clifftop, where visitors walk plank paths hung on the edge of a sheer rock wall above a sea of cloud and see the slender, towering pillar called «One Stick of Incense», a forest of rocks and a narrow cleft known as «One-Line Sky»; and the Yunlong ground fissure, a deep crack in the earth where waterfalls tumble and blue water runs along the bottom. Qixingzhai costs CNY 105 from March to November and 80 in winter, the Yunlong fissure 50, the cable car up 105, the bus with the ground cable car 50 a trip, and escalators and lifts 30 one way, per visitor guides. The visit takes a full day, so start early.
A towering pillar.
Above the clouds.
Falls in the earth.
Qing River basin, about 50 km by road north-west of Enshi city, Hubei
To a degree: the paths are long with many steps, but the cable car can shorten the climb and escalators the descent.
Choices are few in the canyon, so bring food; Enshi city has a few restaurants run by Muslims, while local Tujia cooking uses a lot of smoked pork.