Hubei · A Place Administered as a Forest
Shennongjia (神农架)
A high, wet, thickly forested block of mountains in western Hubei, protected as a nature reserve and administered as a forest district rather than as a county. It is the place Chinese people associate with the wild man, and the thing actually worth coming for is the forest.
Quick Facts
The Short Version
| What it is | A mountain forest reserve in western Hubei, and an administrative district named for its forest rather than for a town |
|---|---|
| Where | Western Hubei, between the Three Gorges and the Sichuan border. Several hours from Yichang by road |
| Listed | A UNESCO World Heritage Site, a Global Geopark and a Man and the Biosphere reserve |
| How high | High enough that one of the valley markers records 2,820 metres, and the summits are higher |
| The famous thing | The wild man. Searches were mounted for decades and nothing was found |
| The real thing | Forest. Rhododendron in late spring, a mixed canopy in autumn, snow from late autumn to spring |
| Wildlife | Golden snub-nosed monkeys are the animal most visitors do see |
| Time needed | Three days. The reserve is large and the roads inside it are slow |
Why Go
The Forest, and the Thing That Was Never There
1. It is a forest before it is anything else
Most Chinese protected areas are named for a mountain or a lake and organised around a peak. This one is named for its forest and administered as one: its official designation is a forest district, which is a different kind of unit from the counties around it, and the thing being protected is the cover rather than a summit. Chinese sources treat that designation as unique to this place.
What that protects is worth understanding before arriving. These mountains were less affected by Pleistocene cold than most of the northern hemisphere, and the forest that survived here holds species that died out elsewhere, including trees with no close living relatives. Western plant collectors worked this region around the turn of the twentieth century and a number of garden plants now common in Europe and North America came out of these valleys and the ones next to them.
The pictures below show that rather than describe it. One is taken straight down into an autumn canopy where a dozen distinct colours mean a dozen distinct species in the same few hectares. Another looks down on a slope where rhododendrons in full bloom are scattered as individual bushes among conifers and broadleaf trees, which is what a natural population looks like rather than a planted display. A third is a stream in fresh snow, which is the same forest for a good part of the year.
2. The wild man
Shennongjia is where China looks for its Bigfoot. Reports of a large hair-covered biped go back a long way, they multiplied through the twentieth century, and from the 1970s onward there were organised searches, some of them official and well resourced, involving soldiers, scientists and a good deal of equipment. Hair samples, footprints and photographs were collected and examined. Nothing that survived examination was ever produced.
The legend did not go away when the searches ended; it changed jobs. There is a museum, there are sculptures, and the approach road is straddled by an enormous monument of two shaggy ape-like figures kissing, with a row of walking ape-man silhouettes along the kerb beneath it. One of the pictures below is that monument. It is not subtle and it is not pretending to be evidence.
The honest way to hold this is to notice what the legend has protected. A mountain block with an unresolved mystery attached to it attracts attention, funding and visitors in a way that a mountain block with rare maples does not, and some of that attention has gone into keeping the forest intact. The other monument here works the same way: a colossal horned stone head with outstretched arms, representing the mythical emperor who is said to have tasted every plant to find which were medicine. That figure is why the place is called what it is, and the claim being made is about botany.
The catch. This is a large reserve with slow roads, several separate ticketed areas and long distances between them, so a car or a hired driver is close to essential and two days is not enough. The weather is wet, cold and changeable at altitude, and the high sections close in winter. English is thin on the ground. The wild man material is heavy, repetitive and aimed squarely at domestic visitors, and anyone who came for the forest will want to route around most of it.
Orientation
A District, Not a Site
Shennongjia is an administrative area rather than a single attraction, and the ticketed sections sit inside it at some distance from one another: a high valley and its boardwalks, a pass with viewpoints, an area of meadow and rock, the Shennong altar with its stone figure, and the wild man museum. Roads connect them and the driving is a real part of the day.
The usual base is the small town of Muyu, near the main gate, where most of the accommodation is. From there the high sections are a drive of an hour or more each way, which is why three days works and two feels rushed.
Practical
Things Worth Knowing
Hire a car or a driver
Public transport inside the reserve is thin and the distances between sections are the main constraint on what you can see.
Come for late May or October
Rhododendron or autumn colour. Those are the two weeks that justify the journey.
Take warm and waterproof layers
It is high, wet and changeable, and the gate can be in sun while the top is in cloud and several degrees colder.
Decide how much wild man you want
The theme is inescapable at the entrances and easy to leave behind once you are up in the forest.
Timing
When to Go
| Season | The case for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Late May and June | Rhododendron on the high slopes and the forest at its freshest | Wet. This is a rainy mountain block and cloud sits on it for days |
| September and October | Autumn colour through a very mixed canopy, and the clearest air of the year | The first week of October is a national holiday and the roads inside the reserve fill |
| July and August | Cool at altitude when the Yangtze cities are unbearable, which is why domestic visitors come | The busiest season, and afternoon thunderstorms are common |
| November to April | Snow, rime and an almost empty reserve | High sections close, the cold is serious and access depends on the road |
Context
What a Legend Is Worth
Unexplained large primates are a worldwide genre: the sasquatch in North America, the yeti in the Himalaya, the yowie in Australia, the almas in Central Asia. They share a structure. Reports come from thinly populated forest or mountain country, they resist proof, and serious searches produce hair that turns out to be bear and footprints that turn out to be ambiguous. China’s version lives here, and it has been investigated with more official resource than most.
What is interesting is not whether the animal exists. It is what the belief has done. The searches brought scientists into these mountains in numbers, and the surveys they made while looking for something that was not there recorded a great deal that was: plants, monkeys, the structure of the forest. The legend also gave the area a public profile that helped turn it into a reserve, and the reserve is why the forest still stands.
The other name attached to this place points the same way. Shennong, the divine farmer, is the culture hero credited in Chinese tradition with identifying which plants heal and which kill, by the method of eating them. That story is a myth and it encodes something real: these mountains have been a source of medicinal plants for a very long time, and the herbalists who worked them were doing a version of what the myth describes. A forest that produced a god of pharmacology and a legend of an undiscovered ape is a forest people have always understood to contain more than they could name.
Nearby
Other Stops on the Same Trip
Spot · about 150 km south
Shennong Stream (神农溪)
The tributary that runs down from these mountains to the Yangtze, and shares the name.
Spot · about 200 km south
The Three Gorges Dam (三峡大坝)
At Yichang, which is the gateway city for this reserve anyway.
Spot · about 250 km northeast
Wudang Mountains (武当山)
The Daoist mountain, and the other reason to be in western Hubei.
Where to Base
Yichang (宜昌)
Yichang on the Yangtze is the practical gateway: high-speed rail and an airport, and the road up into the mountains. It is also the city for the Three Gorges Dam, so the two combine naturally into one trip.
Inside the reserve the accommodation is concentrated in Muyu near the main gate, with some at the higher sections. Staying up there rather than commuting from Yichang is the only way to make the mornings work.
Experiences
What You Can Actually Do Here
On site · three days
The forest, properly
The high valley and its boardwalks, the pass and the meadows, and a dawn for the monkeys, with the driving built into the plan rather than discovered on arrival.
On site · half day
The wild man and the altar
The museum, the monuments and the Shennong altar, for the culture rather than the forest.
Guided · 6 days
Western Hubei
This reserve, the gorge country below it and the Daoist mountain to the northeast, which together are the part of central China almost no foreign itinerary reaches.
Come for the trees. The wild man is what put this place on the map and the searches found nothing, but the attention they brought helped protect a forest that holds species which vanished almost everywhere else. Give it three days, drive between the sections without resenting the driving, and aim for the rhododendron in late May or the canopy in October.
Western Hubei, Beyond the Dam
Almost every foreign visitor to this province sees the dam and turns round. Tell us your dates and our local team will take you up into the forest behind it, handle the driving between the sections, and put you on the high ground when the rhododendron or the autumn is actually happening.