Huang Caoliang - Beijing

A few weeks ago we went on a hike organized by the China Culture Center to an area in Beijing called Huang Caoliang.

Huang Caoliang is in a district of  western Beijing called Mentougou. As you can see it is quite mountainous while central Beijing is as flat as a pancake.

This rock formation is known as the elephant trunk. It looks like this chunk of rock sort of slid down from up above.

There are a lot of flowering trees in the area.

This area has seen a lot of investment in tourism infrastructure over the last few years. The roads into the area are in good shape with a lot of spots for picnicking, etc. They even have emergency location towers along the trail.

There are a lot of fruit trees under cultivation in the area. This farmer is walking along an irrigation channel. It looks like he has a saw in his pack for trimming the trees.

This little cemetery was located at the trail head. The stone on the left is for a man named Wang. It was erected by his children in 2011, I believe.

These beekeepers were working in the area.

Here Margot and I are standing on the trail.

The flowering trees were very pretty.

Some are apple and some are wild peach.

Several different types and colors.

Some sort of wild flower I think.

A lot of trees.

I'm not sure if these are all the same or not.

At this elevation (about 4000 ft) the tress were not nearly as leafed out as in Beijing city.

Another wildflower.

This is about the only wildlife we saw other than birds. I understand this centipede or whatever is used in Chinese medicine.

No idea what this hut was used for.

There were hundreds of these walls forming terraces up the valleys. Someone spent a lot of effort lugging these rocks around to make the walls.

It looked like it was mostly fruit trees planted on the terraces.

There was a herd of goats grazing near the entrance.


Here is a link to Google Maps location. We started our hike at the very bottom-center of the map.  Huang Cailiang