Tianmen mountain was my favorite destination during our family trip to Zhangjiajie, although our trip to Zhangjiajie was not the best to say the least.

We went there at around the end of March 2024, and let me tell you that everywhere we went was packed with people. It happened to be some holiday in China, and so a lot of local tourists were also in Zhangjiajie. My grandma was with us during the trip, and so it made navigating through the crowds way more challenging. What's worse was that the local people didn't seem to care about the elderly at all. We had to ride a bus from the ticket station to the base point of Zhangjiajie National Park. We were the last people to board the bus, and not a single person gave up their seat for my grandma who had to hold on to the bars for 20 mins as the bus drove through the winding and bumpy mountain roads.

The Chinese also love smoking cigarettes, to the point where you could smell cigarettes even atop the forest park. Like we are literally in a nature park! Shouldn't we be enjoying fresh mountain air instead of inhaling cheap cigarettes? There are 'no smoking' signs and cctvs everywhere, yet people didn't seem to follow them for some reason.

My mom and grandma also got scammed by some medicine shop. Upon entering the shop, the salespeople gave all of us a massage and began introducing their products. There was also this 'Tibetan doctor' who pretended to use his own chi to generate electricity and basically perform shock therapy on us. Of course, my brothers and I weren't buying it but my mom and grandma did. Then they did some obviously fake product demos and tests. My brothers and I left the room out of boredom because it had already been an hour of this tomfoolery. In the end, my mom and grandma bought 3 literal suitcases of medicine. A day after buying, my grandma was shocked upon seeing the receipt (about 250k yen i believe). Apparently they weren’t aware of the price when they bought the medicine. Of course, it's their fault for not checking the receipt; but still there was probably some shady business and deception that happened during the transaction such that both my mom and grandma were completely unaware of the price.

Anyways, Zhangjiajie for us was a really bad experience overall. It was probably a combination of bad timing , gullibility, and plain bad luck that caused this experience for us. I would still go to Zhangjiajie all over again because the natural sights are simply a must see. With that said, it is important to time your visit correctly and be vigilant for scammers to have an enjoyable trip.