Ｚｈａｎｇｊｉａｊｉｅ：Ａ　Ｗｏｎｄｅｒ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　Ｗｏｒｌｄ.docVIP

Ｚｈａｎｇｊｉａｊｉｅ：Ａ　Ｗｏｎｄｅｒ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　Ｗｏｒｌｄ 　　IN an article entitled “China’s Ancient Skyline” published on July 15, 2007 in The New York Times, American journalist Simon Winchester wrote about his tour of Zhangjiajie, describing scores of mighty towers climbing endlessly into the foggy sky, like some surreal and unexpected ruined city. “It is a sight utterly to astonish the unprepared, akin only perhaps to the moment when a Midwestern soybean farmer is flushed out of the Lincoln Tunnel into the canyons of Midtown Manhattan.” He added, “In terms of astonishment I found myself saying time and again, as I gaped from cliff-edge and bridge and viewing tower: This is as great as the Great Wall.” 　　Zhangjiajie, in northwestern Hunan Province, consists of more than 3,000 peaks, described as “beautiful girls.” 　　 　　 　　About 1.5 billion years ago, strong movements in the Earth’s crust in northwestern Hunan turned the land into a sea trough and a volcano on the seabed erupted. 　　 　　Unique Landforms 　　 　　Some say that the terrain of Zhangjiajie is similar to karst terrain of Slovenia, but a geologist pointed out that Zhangjiajie’s topography is unique in that its special rock strata have undergone millennia of movements and gravity collapses caused by water erosion in the subtropical climate. 　　About 1.5 billion years ago, strong movements in the Earth’s crust in northwestern Hunan turned the land into a sea trough and a volcano on the seabed erupted. Quartz in the lava formed the “eggs” of Zhangjiajie’s sandstone peak forest. 　　Sea erosion then occurred in northwestern Hunan 380 million years ago. Zhangjiajie’s Wulingyuan, a shallow sea at that time, received large amounts of soil and loose clastic rocks. Later, these became a sandstone peak forest consisting of more than 3,000 knife-edged pillars. Certain geologists have even proposed naming this type of formation a “Zhangjiajie” Landform. 　　 　　The standard karst landform is in Slovenia, well known for its karst caves. Bu