Zhenlong Board 珍龙棋局 at Cangshan 苍山
I really didn’t prepare to visit yet another mountain here in Yunnan. I was already stung by my previous “climb” to the Shika Snow Mountain since I couldn’t see anything up there because of the thick cloud cover. The Cang Mountains weren’t as tall at the Shika Snow Mountain so I thought they would be worse off when it comes to cloud coverage. I was pleasantly surprised to see that clouds were not a problem here, Cangshan is quite high and my experience the previous day was that the tops do get obscured by clouds, we’ll see how this holds up.
Approaching the Cangshan 苍山 Cable Car Station
The cable car station at Cangshan already gives you an idea of how the hike would proceed. From here you can already see one of the attractions of this place – the Zhenlong Board 珍龙棋局. This is a depiction of a board as described in the Eightfold Path of the Heavenly Dragon 天龙八部 which was written by Jin Yong 金庸, a twentieth century novelist among others. The Chinese chessboard here is the largest I have ever seen and it reportedly the largest Chinese chessboard in the world. And it is playable, however each of the pieces are my weight, okay fine, I’m heavier than them, just a bit.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/Cangshan.kmz} zoom=19]