Bridge to prosperity

"It will bring great opportunities to us and play a decisive role in the high-quality development of tourism," said Yang Changhua, director of the canyon's administration office, adding that the attraction is working to improve infrastructure and increase the number of activities offered to tourists.

The 80-kilometer Huajiang Canyon — a fissure in the earth equivalent to the Grand Canyon in the United States — is the longest of its kind in China. Cliffs are as high as 1 kilometer, with a massive number of trees and vines clinging to the walls. Flowers fall on the green, fast-flowing currents below to form a colorful ribbon. It is also why the river is called the Huajiang River: Hua refers to flowers in Chinese.

The canyon is also where the saintly monk Tang Xuanzang met one of his four companions, the fish spirit Sha Wujing, in the classic TV drama Journey to the West.

Inside the canyon there is a replica of an old steel cable bridge that was built in 1628 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The Red Army crossed this bridge to enter Qianxinan Bouyei and the Miao autonomous prefecture on the famed Long March, an epic strategic military retreat in the mid-1930s. The original bridge was submerged because the water level rose after construction of a hydropower station. Tourists can take yachts or speedboats to see it.

During the May Day holiday last month, it received 100,000 tourist visits. It currently gets around 3,000 visits daily, with a goal of 3 million visits a year, said Yang of the administrative office.

Another highlight of the tourism cluster is Guanling Fossil National Geopark, which features massive numbers of fossils of marine reptiles, invertebrate marine animals and ancient plants dating back 220 million years, all of which help researchers studying the late Triassic epoch.