Published: November 24, 2025
As I write this, I am in my final days of the two-week trip to China, and my thoughts are on ecotourism. During these last few days of the trip, UL’s Confucius Institute Director Dexter S. Sumo, our Chinese colleague Mr. William Ye, a retired linguistics professor from Changsha University of Science and Technology who has previously worked with students from UL’s Confucius Institute, and I were treated to a three-day, two-night excursion to Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in Hunan Province, about two hours away from Changsha by train.
Zhangjiajie was China’s first national forest park and today can boast UNESCO Global Geopark (GGp) status. This is an elite designation for parks of global geological significance that also meet certain criteria for sustainability and community economic development. The purpose of such parks is to preserve Earth’s geological heritage, support geological research, and create value and improved livelihoods for concerned communities, such as those traditionally established in the park area. There are just under 200 such parks in the world across nearly 50 countries, most of which, currently, are in China and Europe. Only two Global Geoparks – one in Morocco and one in Tanzania – are classified as African, although Portugal claims one in the Azores and Spain claims one in the Canary Islands.
Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is famous for its quartz-sandstone pillars and columns, naturally formed eons ago when the area was under the ocean and, over time, through natural erosion processes. Anyone who has seen classical Chinese nature art has probably seen depictions of these strikingly unique mountain-like formations. The park boasts over 3,000 such peaks. In person, these formations are visually stunning and majestic; they are a sight one will never forget.
Across our three days of touring, we were able to see these natural wonders from a variety of angles, from a distance and up-close. Chinese people treasure these mountains and their associated forest as part of their national identity and heritage, and people from all over the world come to visit them. During our tour, we observed large groups and families from South Korea, India, Pakistan, the United States, Russia and various other European nations, and various Arab nations. While most signage in the park is in Chinese and English, there was a significant amount of signage in Korean and Russian, letting us know that these tourist flows were well established and profitable.
Lest you think this was just walking around big stones and tall trees, I must describe the other attractions that have been added to the park to add interest to the experience and value to the enterprise. On our first day, we walked across the famous Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge, which is the world’s longest and highest glass-bottomed bridge. Spanning Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon, this 1,411-foot-long bridge allows tourists to look down over 900 feet into the canyon floor below. Not for the faint-hearted! This bridge is made of 99 panes of three-layer tempered glass and can hold up to 800 people at a time. For the daredevils amongst us, it is the world’s highest bungee jump point. This part of the park also had cable cars, a very long and winding sliding board, a slow-moving river ferry ride, and a zip-line ride. I was only brave enough for the first three! The most beautiful thing in this part of the park was a long, well-constructed boardwalk inside the canyon where visitors could stroll for about an hour along the jade green river at the bottom of the canyon, amidst the trees, and close enough to the rock formations to touch them.
Along the path were waterfalls, caves, and other intriguing natural features. This experience was not just stimulating to the senses; it was also great exercise in an inspiring setting – the essence of ecotourism. And did I mention that this park – and all the parks – had plenty of stairs and steps?? We probably walked thousands of steps per day! On the second day, we went to a different part of the park where the main attraction was wide views of the rock formations from a distance. Many of the rock formations had been given traditional descriptions, such as “The General,” “The Three Sisters,” “The Ship,” “The Puppy,” “The Old Man Collecting Traditional Chinese Herbs,” “The Fairy Blowing Flowers from Her Basket,” “The Old Lovers,” etc., denoting that thousands if not millions of people over the centuries had studied and contemplated these ancient structures and brought them to life with imagination.
A famous attraction that had been added to this site is the world’s longest elevator. This elevator, constructed on the side of one of the cliffs, was glass on three sides so that spectators of all kinds could take in the view. The three of us rode on this elevator with our tour guide. A major claim to fame for this park is that it inspired the scenery for the movie Avatar, a science fiction fantasy film and global blockbuster with rich depictions of an alternative world. Some of the rock formations in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park had been used as a prototype for the computer-enhanced scenery in the movie. For movie buffs and fantasy fans, this was a genuine motivator for visiting this nature area. Plenty of signage in the park detailed the connection to Avatar, but it was done tastefully so as not to detract from the natural vistas.
On the third day, we visited Zhangjiajie’s highest peak, Tianmen Mountain. To get there, we had to take a cable car up to one point on the mountain, then a bus through miles of narrow and winding mountain roads to the next level, then twelve (12!) long escalators, each taking two minutes each, to the next level, then lots and lots of stairs to the peak. The scenery was stunning every step of the way, and it was remarkable to see the city of Zhangjiajie down in the valley, with all the winding roads we had traveled in view. The most famous feature of Tianmen Mountain, known as Tianmen Cave, is a huge oval-shaped cutout in the mountain itself that looks like a keyhole. In 1999, a stunt pilot successfully flew an airplane through this keyhole and lived to tell. This mountain is well-known as a home to extreme sports and daredevils – those who like to jump, fly, parachute, rollerblade, mountain bike, drive (racecars or SUVs), walk a tightrope, or engage in parkour, under extreme conditions.
Photos of successful feats and those who performed them appear throughout the park, particularly at the official launch points for these extreme sports. However, I was sad to learn that, for some of the sports, 30% of people don’t make it. A safer alternative for us regular people was to traverse the famous glass-bottomed walkway along the edge of one of the cliffs, which we ourselves did and live to tell! For me, just climbing the all the steps was an extreme sport. I was impressed by all the people far older than me who were pulling it off with ease. This told me that, in a place with such natural beauty, well-developed so that people can enjoy it regularly, a health benefit accrues to the population.
It made me wish there were more sites like this in Liberia! Given that, as UL President, this trip inspired me further to establish tourism studies – especially ecotourism studies – at the University of Liberia. Not only do we need courses in hospitality management for those who will be interacting with tourists, but we need courses that connect other disciplines to tourism. For example, environmental studies must have courses that contribute to a deep, shareable understanding about Liberia’s natural wonders so that scientifically accurate materials can be developed to educate tourists, whether local or international, in the form of signage, brochures, documentaries, and the like. Engineering courses that relate to the construction of safe and sustainable tourist attractions, particularly those that go “beyond nature” to add value (and revenue) to an ecotourism site while blending into – even enhancing – the site need to be designed, tested, and constructed.
UL’s arts courses need to be enhanced – both in terms of creating culturally meaningful and durable souvenir items for tourists of all income levels, and also in terms of digital arts that enable us to create the kinds of videos, digital graphics, and animations that today’s consumers expect. And, of course, we need entrepreneurship courses so that all these students can start their own businesses and become job creators upon graduation!
This trip really got my head spinning. While people may think I was “just enjoying” (and it was an enjoyable experience) because I was traveling out of the country, the truth is, I was “at work” the whole time, constantly thinking about how to take UL to the next level by learning about how things are done elsewhere and thinking about how to inspire our students to take Liberia to the next level. Stay tuned, because this is just the first installment of my “Ecotourism Goals” reflections!
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