--- title: "Two Days in Anshun: Huangguoshu and Longgong" date: 2026-08-30 excerpt: "Four of us traveled from Gui'an to Anshun on a weekend break from training, exploring Huangguoshu's waterfalls and the caves of Longgong, the Dragon Palace." tags: - 安顺 - Essay lang: en updated: 2026-10-04 20:52:53 i18n: cn: /an_shun translation: 2 --- August 30, 2026, the first weekend after training ended. I could finally unwind after days of tension. After lunch, I slept from 12:22 PM to 3:51 PM, then quietly thought back to our trip to Anshun a few days earlier. As my mind wandered, "Eastward Bound" from *Red Dead Redemption 2* came to me for no particular reason. Its airy, gentle melody suited this moment of looking back on the trip and letting my thoughts settle. With the music slowly unfolding, I began gathering fragments of Anshun's mountains and waters and putting them into words. ## Day One · Huangguoshu 🏞️ The alarm dragged me out of a bizarre dream at 7:25 that morning. The dream had probably come during REM[^1] sleep; afterward, I kept slipping between light sleep and wakefulness. I wanted to go back to sleep, but we had an itinerary to keep. Getting out of bed had been this hard every day during training, and the sleep debt kept piling up. [^1]: Rapid eye movement sleep. ### Buying Tickets We had looked into tickets quite carefully before setting off. Saving a little money was always welcome. Jing had already been to Huangguoshu and wasn't especially keen to go again, but we eventually settled on Longgong and Huangguoshu. Once we'd decided where to go, Jing recommended accommodation and the best-value ticket option. We couldn't verify our student status online, so we bought the ¥300 combined ticket for Huangguoshu and Longgong. My college roommates Bouncing and Hang had also spent a few days in Anshun after graduation. They said graduates could get student tickets at the staffed ticket windows. That waived Huangguoshu's ¥160 admission fee; you only had to pay for the shuttle buses, escalators, and other extras. ### On the Road We were taking a carpool ride. Jing had booked an 8:00 AM pickup, but when I woke up, she had posted in our WeChat group that the driver would be half an hour late. We could sleep a little longer. The car was lovely. We were lucky to get such a comfortable ride. We passed through several tunnels and along elevated roads, with mountains visible on either side. The mountains here tend to stand apart as individual blue-green cones, scattered yet stretching far into the distance, rather than joining into a continuous, rolling range. I saw this even more clearly from above on my flight out of Guizhou a week later. ### Tianxing Bridge At 10:36, the bus reached the Great Waterfall stop, then took us a little farther to Tianxing Bridge. Just inside the entrance, we spotted the characters for "Tianxing Bridge" carved into rock, remarkably high up. Carving them probably required a drone or someone being lowered on ropes. Many of the paths at Tianxing Bridge were narrow. It was hot, and some stretches were in direct sunlight. At Tianxing Lake, along a garden walkway where the view changed with every few steps, we found a butterfly sitting motionless on the armrest of a traditional curved-back bench. Fan, Xuan, and I all stopped to film it for quite a while. Tianxing Lake wasn't especially beautiful. Unremarkable fountain nozzles were scattered across the water. The water lilies, though, came in more colors than I'd expected: purple, blue, and yellow, not just the pink I associate with lotuses. The second half of the route was packed. There was no room to stride along; we could only shuffle with the crowd. The hot, stuffy air made it particularly miserable. Tianxing Cave left a strong impression. Its first stretch was just as cramped and crowded, but after the long, narrow, dark passage, we stepped into a vast cavern and everything suddenly opened up. The cool air swept away much of the irritation from the heat and crowds outside. #### Yinlian Zhuitan Waterfall At the far end of Tianxing Bridge is Yinlian Zhuitan Waterfall. On the way, I noticed Jing stop with her backpack wedged between her legs, both hands occupied. I had no idea what she was trying to do, so I stood there holding her glasses and phone for a while. She was tying up her hair. That probably helped her cool down a lot. I was wearing rather thick jeans that day, so I could sympathize. Switching to more breathable "ice silk" trousers the next day felt much better. The waterfall was unlike any I'd seen before. Water spread across an entire sloping rock bed, first forming a thin sheet, then splitting into strands along the ridges in the rock. Each strand flowed into the deep pool below, rather than plunging down in one great torrent. #### A Three-Flavor Sundae We had lunch at Tastien. Fan, Xuan, and I ordered duck burgers; Jing only got a few snacks. Maybe burgers weren't her thing. We'd also placed an order at Mixue beforehand. I wanted iced lychee milk and a sundae. The staff couldn't keep up, and our sundaes were taking forever. A woman beside us in a yellow backless top was getting impatient too and kept asking them to hurry. We decided to eat our burgers first and come back afterward. Jing said the order was ready, but when I went over to ask, it turned out they'd run out of Oreo crumbs. They'd made us three-flavor sundaes instead: strawberry, mango, and a tiny bit of chocolate. The sundae was good for cooling down, though I kept noticing an inexplicable hint of garlic. ### The Great Waterfall > Like crushed pearls and shattered jade, the spray surged upward, rising like smoke into the air, fierce and mighty. > > Xu Xiake · *The Travels of Xu Xiake*, "Diary of Travels in Guizhou" We took a bus to the Great Waterfall next, then walked down from the top of the hill. At first, we could only see it from a distance. Honestly, it wasn't particularly overwhelming. Down on the viewing platform at the foot of the falls, mist filled the air. I wiped the droplets off my glasses, only for them to gather again almost immediately. Some spray got into my eyes and made them sting a little. Two young men on the platform were taking photos of each other. I took one of Fan, and he took one of me. Then we traded favors with the other pair: one of them photographed the four of us together, and we took a photo of the two of them. As we were leaving that part of the park and about to take the escalator, Xuan's iPhone had poor reception, so I shared my phone's hotspot with her. After connecting, she glanced at my screen and asked, puzzled, "Why is everything in English?" I can't even remember when I switched my entire system to English. It was probably an attempt to learn the language at first. Later, I also noticed that Chinese isn't quite a first-class citizen in digital typography. The Chinese glyphs in OneUI's default font don't handle font weight as well as the Latin letters. Replacing it with Apple's PingFang SC would help, but OneUI has blocked the ways to install custom system fonts. ### Doupotang Our last stop was Doupotang, with sculptures of the four pilgrims from *Journey to the West*, as well as the real and false Monkey Kings. On the way to the waterfall, we found a platform to rest on and put down two tissues we'd brought from Tastien. While we were sitting there, a piece of fruit fell straight into Jing's clothes. Fortunately, it wasn't a durian. In front of Doupotang Waterfall, I struck a classic photo pose from our college dorm days. Bouncing and Fan had planned to do it with Lei, but Lei had gone to western Sichuan after graduation and couldn't be there. So I did the pose here, keeping the memory alive at another time, in another place. We took a taxi back to the hotel, bringing an exhausting day to an end. I ordered McDonald's delivery, while Fan headed straight for an internet café to get his internet fix. ## Day Two · Longgong 🐉 I got up at 7:34 AM to wash. Water droplets clung to my eyelashes afterward, and when I looked at my phone's flashlight, a rainbow ring appeared around it. Around eight, Fan and I packed our things and went downstairs for breakfast. It was on the second floor, just a flight of stairs away. The food looked ordinary. I took some shredded carrots and two or three spoonfuls of egg fried rice. I couldn't be bothered to get soy milk, so I had a few sips of the water in my bag and went downstairs to check out. Fan also got a bottle of water for me, so each of the four of us had one. The ice-silk trousers I'd bought the day before really worked; my legs felt much cooler. I wore a white T-shirt, which didn't absorb much sunlight, though it wasn't particularly good at absorbing sweat either. ### Nine Sons Square The first place we reached inside the park was Nine Sons Square. A ring of stone sculptures resembled porous Taihu garden rocks, presumably depicting the dragon's nine sons. I could more or less recognize Chiwen: a fish-like head against the ground and a tail pointing upward, the familiar figure seen on roof ridges. I didn't know the others well enough to identify them from their outlines alone. > Today, the red spider lily is better known by another name: higanbana. The name comes from Japan, where the three days before and after the spring and autumn equinoxes are known as "spring Higan" and "autumn Higan," respectively. The red spider lily flowers relatively late among plants of the genus Lycoris. Its peak bloom coincides with the autumn equinox, and its flowers blaze red, hence the name higanbana. The name therefore generally refers specifically to the red spider lily. > > [An Autumn Equinox Story: The Red Spider Lily · Shanghai Flower News · Shanghai Landscaping and City Appearance Administrative Bureau](https://lhsr.sh.gov.cn/shhx/20220926/073a4cac407044e9a22fa92f7daf72b0.html?f_link_type=f_linkinlinenote&flow_extra=eyJkb2NfcG9zaXRpb24iOjAsImRvY19pZCI6ImE2MTY3ZTA2Zjk2NzVjNDEtZGFlMTg2MTI3YTNiZmE2MiIsImlubGluZV9kaXNwbGF5X3Bvc2l0aW9uIjowfQ%3D%3D) Next came a path along the hillside. Looking up the slope, I saw plenty of golden-yellow plants in the spider lily family. They looked a little like higanbana, except those are red. A quick search told me these yellow spider lilies were called "hudi xiao." ### Tianchi Lake and Longgong's First Section We crossed a bridge and entered something like a limestone cave. For a moment, I thought we'd already reached Longgong. We came out, passed through another similar cave, and arrived at a pavilion. I suggested a break, took out a tissue to wipe away the sweat, and finished my bottle of Nongfu Spring water. At least that took another 500 grams out of my backpack. After resting, we continued past a rock garden. Xuan thought it looked pretty, so we took a detour inside. It really was lovely, with several rock carvings stained green. A few more steps brought us to Tianchi Lake's dock, where boats enter Longgong's first section. The queue took a long time. Xuan messaged us on WeChat that we might not get on the same boat. Fan replied that the two of them should go ahead. After a little more waiting, all four of us did get on the same boat, though we were near the back. Every photo had heads in the way, so I had to hold my phone over the side or high above them. As we crossed Tianchi Lake, I dipped a hand into the water. It was very cold. The boat operator told us to keep our hands inside, so that was the end of that. The two characters for "Longgong," or "Dragon Palace," were carved to the right of the cave entrance. Inside, the lighting kept changing color. Water occasionally dripped from overhead, and the stalactites were magnificent. ### Tiger's Den After getting off at the dock, we reached a rest area. Beside it was a small attraction called Tiger's Den, so we went to have a look. The route passed through a shopping street. Something smelled wonderful in one of the shops, but I didn't stop to investigate. At the entrance to Tiger's Den, gusts of cool natural air flowed out toward us. Inside were the same vividly colored LED lights. I liked the yellow best; it came closest to the natural feel of firelight. The cave had two branches. We followed one to its end, then doubled back to the fork and took the other, which led to a different exit. We sat on some chairs for a long time afterward. Looking up routes on Xiaohongshu, we found that reaching Guanyin Cave would mean another kilometer uphill. None of us wanted to walk that far. A display board showed that the mountain path to the right of our chairs led back to the dock for Longgong's first section, so we headed back that way. ### Longgong's Second Section > At first it was so narrow that a person could barely pass. A few dozen steps farther on, it suddenly opened out. > > Tao Yuanming · *The Peach Blossom Spring* Before boarding, we walked through a tunnel lit blue and wrapped in rubber on the outside. It felt quite surreal. We were lucky at the dock: we were the first four in line, and no other visitors boarded. Fan and I sat in the second row, with our two other colleagues in the first. We had a clear view and could take photos freely. This was the most beautiful stretch of the whole trip. I recorded a long video. Eventually, the boat headed out of the cave toward a dazzling expanse of white light. Once outside, the boat operator asked whether anyone wanted to get off at the dock on the opposite bank. No one answered, so we turned back. As we passed from cave to cave, those lines from *The Peach Blossom Spring* kept coming to mind. Back at the end of Longgong's first section, there was an opening to the sky, with daylight falling straight down from above. It was breathtaking. I tried to capture that feeling on camera, but the pictures couldn't match the extraordinary natural formations I saw with my own eyes. We then took a boat from the end back to the starting point. A short walk brought us out of the park. ### An Eager Guesthouse Owner It was sometime after eleven when we came out. We wanted to find the bus and get lunch nearby. An enthusiastic woman at the entrance was trying to bring in customers. She led us all the way to her guesthouse and urged us to step inside for a look. Xuan looked uncomfortable. We had to decline several times before we could get away. Once we were farther off, Xuan said she'd worried that four people might suddenly appear inside, block the way, and refuse to let us leave without spending money. Farther along was a little roadside shop, where a middle-aged man and a young grandson were running a stall. A recording of the child's voice played on a loop through a loudspeaker: "Mineral water, two yuan a cup." A reasonable price, at least. I bought a grilled sausage for five yuan. Xuan bought a jin (500 grams) of oranges, which came to just three. She was sure they couldn't weigh that much. ### Tongxuan River: The Dragon Field and River Crabs We reached the bus stop and rode back to the park's starting point. A canteen was accessible from the right side of the visitor center. On the way, we could see a waterfall near the Tongxuan River to our right. To the left was the Dragon Field, a field planted to form the character "龙," meaning dragon. It looked like cursive script and wasn't easy to make out. The canteen was expensive: stir-fried tomatoes and eggs cost over thirty yuan. I glanced at an older man's plate of rice topped with stir-fried pork and peppers at the next table. It looked hard to swallow: no sauce, rice so dry it seemed stiff, and nothing special about the shredded pork. We decided to sit on the chairs outside instead. I ate some biscuits, Xuan ate her oranges, and the other two weren't hungry either. Two little orange tomcats emerged from under the chairs. They were very cute. One licked its bottom beside the shrubs. When we were about to leave, the pair started tumbling around together. When we scanned our faces to enter the park again, the gate flagged a repeat entry, so a staff member let us through manually. Following his directions, we went out, took the bus, turned right, and went down a few steps to the Dragon Field. Looking up from the foot of the hills, I could see how each rose on its own, separate from the others rather than forming a continuous range. Just like the mountains we'd seen on the road. A family beside the terraces was playing with a river crab. Only then did I realize that crabs were being raised in the rice paddies too. It brought back the ecological farming we'd learned about in high school: the rice shades the crabs, and the crabs' waste fertilizes the rice. A whole cycle in one small patch of land. Farther on was a traditional Chinese covered walkway, with few people around. A few older men told us the boat would leave in about ten minutes, around 12:10 PM. I sat in the second-to-last row, with Xuan in the last row, Jing in front of me, and Fan on my left. The boat moved quickly, leaving a long white wake like an aircraft's trail across the sky. On the side facing the shore, waves rolled toward us with the regular rise and fall of a cosine function. Now and then, tits bobbed their tails on the bank, lively little things that looked almost exactly like the ones I'd seen on Mount Qingcheng. After a fairly long ride, the boat dropped us ashore. A long stretch of shops followed, selling corn and grilled sausages for two yuan each, the usual fare at tourist attractions everywhere. Many stallholders had their children with them. For some reason, the sight made me want to buy something and help a little with the family income. ### A Mountain Temple Farther ahead was the entrance to Guanyin Hall. A sign along the way asked, "What is Chan?" with a pair of vertical inscriptions beneath it. That path wasn't open to visitors; it was probably reserved for the monks. The temple gate bore the name "Jinmen Temple." A notice at the lower right read, "Children are prohibited from participating in religious activities." We paused at the entrance, and I followed the path on the left to have a look. There was Weituo Bodhisattva, with the usual QR code on the offering table. Digital offerings, keeping up with the times. Just then, a group came up from below. The person in front wore a blue coat and carried a speaker, singing along with the music. Jing couldn't help laughing and said the song sounded very much of another era. The temple felt deeply secluded, unlike any I'd visited before. It was probably the karst landscape; mountains like these aren't common in other provinces. The Mahavira Hall housed three Tathagata Buddhas. To the right was Guanyin Hall, where two young attendants stood beside Guanyin. Fan said they were Jinzha and Muzha. There were also several Dragon King halls nearby. Many of the Dragon Kings' names were transliterated from Sanskrit, while I only knew the four River Dragon Kings from *Black Myth: Wukong*. Dizang Hall was forty meters away. The information board said the route inside ran for three hundred meters. Once we entered, we kept descending as though on a spiral staircase. The steps were wet and slippery, and looking down was a little unnerving. At the bottom, there was nowhere else to go. The map seemed to show a route to the dock for Longgong's second section, but we couldn't find it. We had to climb back up the way we'd come and return to the visitor center. ### Heading Back At 2:14 PM, we took a shuttle out of the park, just as my ankles were starting to ache. The two women had sore legs. None of us had escaped unscathed. By the time I boarded, there were no seats left in the back, so I got to sit beside the driver and enjoy the view. On the taxi ride back, the driver had a "Suixin Suoyu" slow-dance mix playing. Fan and Xuan, to my right, both fell asleep. When we got out, the driver sent a WeChat payment code for the tolls: twenty-nine yuan, a little less than I'd expected. I'd thought it would be thirty-nine, though perhaps I'd misread it in the first place. Back at our accommodation, I picked up my food delivery: six grilled wings, two burgers, and a medium Coke. I drank the Coke in one go. That night, my stomach started acting up, and I made several trips to the toilet. Training resumed the next day. It was rough. ## Afterword After two days, Huangguoshu and Longgong left very different impressions. Huangguoshu's crowds took much of the pleasure out of the visit. Longgong had far fewer visitors and scenery every bit as good, making the overall experience much better. From the boat on the Tongxuan River, I watched a few tits flick their tails on the bank. Their movements reminded me of the little forktail I'd seen beside [[qingchengshan#濯足与落水|a stream on Mount Qingcheng]]. The more places I visit, the more often these moments of familiarity arise. This is what Proust calls **involuntary memory** in *In Search of Lost Time*. A chance sight unlocks sensory memories of somewhere else, without any conscious effort, briefly bringing past and present together. It happens often in my own life. As I write this, I'm nearly over the flu, with just a persistent cough remaining. While working on this afterword, I took a sip of black tea to soothe my throat and suddenly remembered my mother handing me a cup of warm water every morning when I was in secondary school.