A Trip to Zhangjiajie with My Brother

I went to Zhangjiajie with my younger brother last month. He's the kind of person who always says "I could do that" when he sees rock climbers on TV, so I knew this trip would be interesting.

The first night we just walked around the Seventy-two Strange Buildings near our hotel. They look like giant wooden toys stacked together. My brother tried to count all the floors and gave up after twenty. We found a small stall selling grilled skewers and ate way too many while watching the lights come on.

Next morning we went into the national forest park. The Bailong Elevator zoomed us up the cliff so fast my ears popped. When we stepped out, these massive stone pillars were just there, rising out of the green like they had been waiting for us. My brother stood there with his mouth open, which doesn't happen often. We walked along the paths around Yuanjiajie and found the Avatar mountain. The real name is Qiankunzhu but everyone calls it that now. Clouds moved around its middle and the top was covered in trees, so it really looked like it was floating a little. My brother kept saying it's not that tall, but then we looked down and he went quiet. We also went up to Tianzi Mountain and the view just went on and on, peak after peak disappearing into the haze.

One day we went to Tianmen Mountain. The bus ride up was full of sharp turns and my brother pretended to be scared just to annoy me. The Tianmen Cave is this huge opening right through the mountain. Standing below and looking up through it at the blue sky felt like the mountain was showing off. We climbed all those stairs and my brother raced me, then pretended he wasn't out of breath when I caught up. Huanglong Cave was cool inside, literally cool, and we spent an hour just pointing at shapes and making up stories about them. My brother said one stalactite looked like a frozen dragon and I said it looked like a melted candle, so we argued about that for ten minutes.

Furong Town was our favorite for just walking around. It's built next to a waterfall and the water falls right behind the old wooden houses, like a curtain that never stops moving. We found a small bridge and sat there eating ice cream while watching local kids play in the shallow part. My brother dropped his cone into the water and tried to fish it out with a stick, which was a complete failure. He was not happy.

The last big stop was the Grand Canyon. We walked across that glass bridge and looking straight down through the floor at the river so far below made my stomach flip. My brother jumped up and down on purpose to make it shake, and a lady next to us grabbed her husband's arm and yelled at him. He apologized but I saw him smiling.

We got back to the hotel each night with sore feet and dusty shoes. My brother complained about the stairs every single day but he was always the first one up the next morning. We ate a lot of noodles, took way too many selfies with random rocks, and argued about which mountain looked more like a monkey. I think we both had a really good time, even if we never admit it out loud.