Tiantangzhai (天堂寨)

Why Go

Three Lines Along One Ridge

1. The rain divides here

The Dabie range runs northwest to southeast across the middle of China, and this ridge is the part of it that separates two river systems. Water off the northern slope collects into the Huai, which runs east across a flat, flood-prone plain. Water off the southern slope goes to the Yangtze. Standing on a mountain that decides that is a plainer version of a fact that shapes an enormous amount of Chinese history, agriculture and politics.

The same ridge carries the provincial boundary. Anhui is on the north side and Hubei on the south, and each province has built its own scenic area on its own slope, both called Tiantangzhai, with separate gates, separate tickets and separate cable cars. The mountain is one mountain. Your ticket is not.

2. A range nobody could hold

Names here tell you what the terrain was for. Tiantangzhai means something like heaven stockade, and stockade names run all along this range. These hills sit at the corner of several provinces, far from every provincial capital, steep, wooded and hard to move troops through, and for centuries that made them a place people went into rather than through.

It is why the range became a base area during the Chinese civil war of the nineteen twenties and thirties, and why the county at its foot carries that history heavily in its museums and monuments. A foreign visitor will not have the names, and does not need them. The geography is the argument: the same isolation that put a provincial border and a watershed along this ridge is what made it useful to people who did not want to be found.

Orientation

Which Side, and How You Get Up

Decide the province before you book anything. The Anhui entrance is reached from Jinzhai and Lu’an and connects to Hefei; the Hubei entrance is reached from Luotian and connects to Wuhan. Both are three to four hours by road from their respective cities, and crossing from one side to the other is a long drive around rather than a walk over.

On the mountain, the cable car takes you most of the way up and the rest is steps and railed walkways across the granite. The gorge routes with the waterfalls run downhill from the ridge, so the usual plan is to ride up, walk the tops, then descend through the water and take transport back from the bottom.

Context

Where the Dabie Range Sits

The Dabie mountains stand between two of the most heavily populated flat landscapes in China: the Huai plain to the north and the middle Yangtze basin to the south. Everything around them is farmland and cities. The range itself is a wooded block roughly 380 km long with peaks in the 1,500 to 1,800 metre band, and it interrupts the traffic, the weather and the administration of the whole region.

Because it interrupts the weather, it is wet. Summer monsoon air pushing north runs into these slopes and drops its rain, which is why the forest is dense, why there are waterfalls, and why the mountain is cool enough in July to be worth several hours of driving to people living in Hefei and Wuhan.

Because it interrupts the administration, the boundaries of Hubei, Henan and Anhui all meet inside it. That is a normal way for Chinese provincial lines to be drawn, along the ridges where nobody farms. The consequence for a visitor is the doubled scenic areas, and the consequence historically was a region that central authority reached late and held loosely.

Where to Base

Lu’an (六安)

Lu’an is the Anhui prefecture the mountain belongs to and the administrative answer, but it is not where you should sleep. It is three to four hours by road from the gate, and the farm stays and guest houses at the foot of the mountain are both closer and better suited to an early start.

For getting into the area, Hefei is the airport and high-speed hub on the Anhui side and Wuhan on the Hubei side. Wuhan is the easier arrival for most foreign visitors and turns this into a two-night trip out of a city worth a couple of days in its own right.