Jiuzhaigou Valley

The name means, roughly, "valley of nine villages," after the Tibetan settlements scattered through it — villages that predate its 1978 designation as a protected scenic reserve by centuries. The most-told explanation for its lakes has nothing to do with geology: a mountain god, in love with a goddess, gave her a mirror; she dropped it fleeing an attacking demon, and it shattered into over a hundred pieces that became the valley's lakes, each one a shard of that broken gift. It's a good story precisely because the real explanation is almost as strange. Most of Jiuzhaigou's lakes are barrier lakes — created when ancient earthquakes and landslides dumped enough rock and debris across the valley to dam sections of the river outright, backing up meltwater from the surrounding Minshan range into pool after pool rather than one continuous stream.

That seismic origin isn't just history; it's ongoing risk the park has had to live with directly. In August 2017, a magnitude-7 earthquake tore through the region and damaged several of the valley's signature features, including draining much of the water from what had been one of its clearest pools — the same kind of violent, sudden geology that built the place in the first place came back to reshape it.

What makes the lakes worth the trip has less to do with colour than with clarity: the water is cold, mineral-rich and so transparent in places that entire fallen tree trunks are visible lying on the lakebed metres down, perfectly preserved rather than rotted, because the same calcium-carbonate-rich water that keeps the lakes so blue also essentially embalms whatever falls into them.

Getting there

49 km from Zhongzhai. Jiuzhai Huanglong Airport (JZH) is about 44 km away.