China’s hottest new tourist attraction is 5,000 feet in the air
Hong Kong CNN —
China has 3.7 million square miles of land to explore. But more and more young Chinese travelers are opting to see their country from the sky.
The newest of these not-for-the-faint-of-heart structures is called Tianti (“Sky Ladder” in Chinese). It clocks in at 551 feet long (168 meters) and stretches between two cliffs at a height of 5,000 feet, according to Chinese state media.
The attraction is located on Mount Qixing in Zhangjiajie Nature Park, in southwestern China’s Hunan province, an area famous for its complex terrain and diverse landforms.
This particular climbing trail is via ferrata-style, built on the rock wall of a mountain using steel handrails, footrests, tethers and cables to enable people to climb the steep rock walls.
“The feet in this video are mine, and that kid is my son,” said He Qian, whose Tianti climbing video went viral on Douyin, TikTok’s sister app in China.
He’s video, in which she showed her feet on the ladder and then slowly panned over to her nine-year-old son sitting on the ladder calmly, gathered hundreds of likes.
“I was not nervous, my son was,” He told CNN, “but he was all right soon afterward.”
An aerial view of the Mount Qixing via ferrata.He Qian runs a B&B nearby, where she also helps people book tickets for the new attraction.
“Those who like to challenge themselves like doing this,” she added. “ I’ve helped dozens of them get their tickets, they were all scared at the beginning.”
The sky-high attraction in Zhangjiajie receives an average of more than 1,200 tourists per day, according to state-run media outlet CCTV. It has become so popular there was once even a “people jam” in the air.
Zhangjiajie Ferrata has since become a hot trending topic on Chinese
