Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, National forest park in Wulingyuan, Zhangjiajie, China

Zhangjiajie National Forest Park is a forested protected area in Hunan, China, where more than 3,000 quartz-sandstone pillars rise from the slopes. The tallest, the 1,080-metre Southern Sky Column, was renamed Avatar Hallelujah Mountain in January 2010. The pillars are bare grey and brown rock, with shrubs and small trees growing on their flat tops and in crevices.

In 1982 Zhangjiajie became China's first national forest park, initially covering 13 km². Wulingyuan, including the park, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992. The Ministry of Land and Resources designated it the Zhangjiajie Sandstone Peak Forest National Geopark in 2001, and UNESCO added it to its Global Geoparks Network in 2004.

The park's name comes from Zhangjiajie village, whose name is written with the characters for Zhang, family and boundary; the sources record no shrine or legend attached to the pillars. What visitors can observe today is the sandstone pillars themselves, which appear in many ancient Chinese paintings as a hallmark of the Chinese landscape.

Visitors can take the Bailong Elevator (the world's tallest outdoor lift at over 300 meters) or explore on foot; the Golden Whip Stream Trail offers easier walking without technical demands. Plan your visit during drier weather when mist clears, giving better views of the distant pillars rather than obscuring them entirely.

The pillars are not limestone karst: they are quartz-sandstone shaped by physical erosion, mainly ice expanding in winter cracks and plants prising the rock apart, with streams carrying the debris away. The park holds over 3,000 such formations, about a third taller than 200 metres.