A Forest of Stone

Before heading back to Nanjing, one of the last stops I made was to the Stone Forest just outside of the city of Kunming in Yunnan Province.  A few months ago, one of my students had given me the “Wild China” movies and the first one I watched was about the Stone Forest or Shilin in Chinese.  It is believed to have been around for more that 270 million years and was considered the “First Wonder of the World” back in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.)  (In China they calculate time and history by the ruling dynasty at that time.)

Picture walking into an exquisitely manicured park where the grass is so green it looks plastic with not a piece of trash in sight.  Then picture looking up from the impeccable landscape to a sea of enormous rock pillars towering over you, jutting straight up from the ground and scattered thickly among the park in a mish mash formation.  They rise high above the ground, wide and square at the base and thinner and more pointed towards the top.

The Stone Forest is a tourist park that covers an area of 96,000 square acres with karst formations that look like trees rising from the ground.  Walking around the park you feel as if you’re in a different world.  Transported to another planet, walking among a sea of rocks that resemble trees, people and animals.  All beautiful being both rugged and smooth in their own unique way.  Trekking up stone stairs from the base of these limestone monsters to the top, through their centers, around their sides and on top of their heads.  Pointy. Rough.  Round.  Breathtaking. 

Much of the park is divided into sections.  Making certain points a very popular destination for tourists where they huddle together all taking the same pictures.  We ventured away from the hot spots and just wandered the grounds where we found ourselves lost most of the time but that being the best part.  Just aimlessly strolling the park and having a section of the Stone Forest to ourselves. Spending an entire afternoon exploring these beasts and the land they conquered thousands of years ago was like escaping from the modern world and seeing into the past.