Jiu Zhai Go

John Baez

August 2005

Jiu Zhai Go is a park in the Sichuan province of China which is famous for its surreally blue lakes:

I imagine that copper salts are responsible for the insanely blue waters, but I'm not sure.

There are some very nice waterfalls:

There are also vertical mountains of the sort featured in Chinese landscape painting:

Despite the impression I have tried to create in these photos, it's packed with tourists - but when I visited, they were almost all Chinese, with very few Westerners. A Tibetan village in the park serves as a tourist attraction: note the prayer flags in the background below. The Chinese tourist in the cowboy hat is not as weird as you might think: northern Sichuan prides itself on being the "wild west" of China, with lots of horses, sheep, yaks... and cowboys.

For more about Jiu Zhai Go and other parts of Sichuan, try my economics diary. Also check out my photos of Huang Long.

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