Huangguoshu Waterfall
Interesting facts
- The name Yellow Fruit Tree is probably a mishearing: traders recorded the area's common huangjue fig trees as huangguo, and no yellow fruit trees grow there.
- When Xu Xiake visited in 1638 the fall had no name of its own; for centuries it was simply called after the river, the Baishui or White Water.
- The fall formed when underground karst caverns collapsed, and geologists estimate its age at somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 years.
- The fall is slowly retreating upstream, and three older plunge pools further down the valley mark positions it occupied in the past.
- The pool at its foot is called Rhinoceros Pool, said to be named for its shape.
- In July 2007 the flow peaked at about 690 cubic metres per second, the highest recorded that year.
- Inside the Water Curtain Cave there are six window-like openings, five chambers and three springs, all hidden from outside by the falling water.
- In 1992 a bid for World Natural Heritage status failed, partly because deforestation upstream left the river so low that the fall sometimes dried up.
- By the early 1980s forest cover around the falls had fallen to about 3 percent; replanting since 1999 has raised it many times over.
- The falls appear in the celebrated 1986 Chinese television series Journey to the West, which used them as a filming location.
Why it is worth it
Huangguoshu, the "Yellow Fruit Tree" falls, is one of the great waterfalls of Asia: a wide curtain of water on the Baishui River, in the karst country of western Guizhou, that drops about 67 metres in its main leap and nearly 78 metres overall, spread across a front of up to about 100 metres. In the wet season the river turns brown and furious, and the spray rises high above the gorge. The Ming-era traveller Xu Xiake, who came this way in the 17th century, wrote of foam rising from the rocks like mist, and the image still fits.
What sets Huangguoshu apart is that you can walk behind it. The Water Curtain Cave, a natural gallery about 134 metres long cut into the cliff some 40 to 47 metres up the face of the fall, runs right behind the falling water, with openings like windows through which the river thunders past close enough to feel. From below, a path leads to the pool at the base, where on sunny days rainbows hang in the spray. The fall is carved into soft limestone, and the surrounding rock is honeycombed with channels and caves typical of the Guizhou karst.
Huangguoshu is the centrepiece of a whole river system rather than a single sight. The Baishui descends through a series of falls and rapids inside the national park, and at nearby Tianxingqiao the river splits into countless channels threading between stone blocks and trees growing out of the rock, a watery maze that shows how karst country is shaped. The area lies in Zhenning, an autonomous county of the Buyei and Miao peoples, and is rated among China's top-level scenic areas.
Getting there
The falls are in Zhenning County, about 45 km southwest of the city of Anshun and roughly 128 km from Guiyang, the provincial capital. The nearest airport is Anshun Huangguoshu Airport (AVA), about 36 km away. The scenic area is usually reached by road from Anshun or Guiyang.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Huangguoshu Waterfall is the largest waterfall in China and one of the largest waterfalls in East Asia. It is located on the Liuzhi River in Anshun, Guizhou province. It is 77.8 m (255 ft) high and 101 m (331 ft) wide. The main waterfall, at 67 m (220 ft) high and 83.3 m (273 ft) wide, is the biggest waterfall in Asia.
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25.99200, 105.66600per Wikidata