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Brief Introduction about Jiuzhaigou Valley
Jiuzhaigou Valley, reputed as a "fairyland", is located in Jiuzhaigou County of the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Nationality Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan Province. An integration of green lakes, multi-layered waterfalls, forests and snow-mountains with Tibetan culture and customs, it become a well known scenic area and a natural reserve for wild animals and plants in China with its naturally-endowed and uniquely beautiful sceneries. It was listed in the World Natural Heritages in 1992. The green and golden trees, the lofty and multi-shaped mountains and the clear and colorful waters constitute the unique beauty of Jiuzhaigou while the water of Jiuzhaigou is the soul of its beauty. So, there goes the saying: No mountain is worth seeing after you have seen Mount Huangshan and no other water will interest you after you visit to Jiuzhaigou Valley.
The waters of Jiuzhaigou Valley are widely known for their crystal-clearness, pure transparency and rich colorfulness. The mountains, waters, grass, woods, animals and birds here all are keeping their simple primitiveness without a single trace of artificiality. In the Y-shaped valley embraced by mountains are dispersed 114 terraced lakes and many shoal-rapids and waterfalls gradually flow from the heights to lower places in the green mountain valley, winding 50kms, with the blue sky, the white snow mountains and green forests mirrored in the clear lakes, forming a realm of integration of man and heaven against the primitive water-mills, stockade villages and the forest of Buddhist streamers.
Jiuzhaigou Valley lies on the transitional marginal belt of the northeast angle of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau to Sichuan Basin. Its geological structure with bio-karst calcsinter sedimentations as the main has constructed the tranquil lakes , the swift waterfalls, the vasmisty forests and the far-stretching undulating snow mountain ridges in Jiuzhaigou Valley. Its landform belong to the type of high-mountain and deep-valley, its topographic feature being high in the south and low in the north with multi-configurations such as lofty mountains, deep-balleys, waterfalls, streams and inter-mountain plants. The elevation of the mountains in this scenic area is 3500-4500m above sea-level with the highest Garna Peak being 4764m above sea-level and the lowest point Yangdong being 2000m above sea-level. Jiuzhaigou Valley is situated at the transitional zone from the Qin-Ba humidity province of the northern subtropical climate of China to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Western Sichuan humidity province, which has plentiful plant species with more than 2000 hectares of natural forest. Besides rich forest resources, some rare tree and primeval plant species are also preserved in Jiuzhaigou Valley. Here, the annual average temperature is 7.8 centigrade and the annual average huminity is about 60%. Dozen kinds of animals and 140 kinds of birds such as giant panda, river deer, bear, silver pheasant and red-bellied golden pheasant are living here.
In 1990 Jiuzhaigou Valley was cited by the State Bureau of Tourism as the first of “40 Best Tourist Sites in China”; in 1992 it was listed by the World Heritage Council of Unesco into the Catalogue of World Natural Heritages; and in 1997, recommended by the Unesco Expert Group, it was approved at the Paris conference by the Executive Bureau of the International Coordinative of the Man and Bio-sphere Programme to be listed in the World Bio-sphere Reserves.
Jiuzhaigou Valley is a splendid pearl on the Western Sichuan Plateau.
