Huanglong Critique

The tale of my Sichuan travels is written as a continuous story and starts on the entry "In Chengdu" on Nov. 5th, 2008. For context and continuity, feel free to start back at that point and read on forward first if you have not already done so.

Besides being a somewhat too expensive (especially for the "off-season"), there were some other minor annoyances with Huanglong. Some of our pet peeves included:

1. Planks on the road:



We're not sure what the point of this was, as they were actively building more of these plank structures on the side of the road even while we were there. The road seemed fine by itself, and the planks actually made it more difficult to walk - there was a tendency for the foot to get stuck behind one of the horizontal crosses, inviting more walking and falling accidents amongst tourists. Maybe they had too much money to spend and felt they needed to make some unnecessary additions.


2. Too many no-smoking signs

Every couple hundred meters, we would come across another sign. Curious to what it said, and thinking it have some text describing the background or history of a scenic view, we would inevitably be disappointed with another no smoking sign, police sign, or bathroom sign. The no smoking signs were especially prevalent. I understand there are tons of smokers in China, but it's going a little overboard. For example, this tree alone has two no-smoking signs:



Couldn't they spend all the extra money they make from over-priced tickets a bit better? If you can't come up with any more scientific, historical, and or cultural descriptions than the few that are already placed in the park, at least be more like Jiuzhaigou, where they have signs next to obscure plants providing their scientific names.


3. Too many bathrooms / bathrooms are too nice



There's nothing wrong with nice bathrooms, or having a bathroom a few several hundred meters (we saw about 8-9 on the way down). After all, when I got to the top of Huanglong, the port-a-potty I used was actually not too bad. It didn't smell or look disgusting, and I was rather impressed. I think I'm just more annoyed that they spend all their money on improving these facilities rather than reducing the ticket price, or improving the signage to provide more information about the park.

That said, they probably still went way overboard on spending when they designed the first bathroom at the entrance:




4. Too many police stations

Crime rate cannot be that high in Huanglong to warrant the number of police stations they have in the park. There's nothing bad with having so many; it just seems like such a waste. Were there uprisings in the park at one point or something?


So maybe our complaints aren't really substantive. We're just generally unsatisfied with the fact that a good portion of the value of the ticket is found in such peripheral improvements.