The Chishui area, about 150 kilometres west of Zunyi on the Guizhou–Sichuan border, contains one of China's six designated Danxia landscapes and the only one on the UNESCO World Heritage List with intact bamboo forest at altitude. The combination is arresting: red sandstone cliffs and towers rising from a sea of green bamboo, cut by rivers that run red after rain, with waterfalls cascading over the edge of the red escarpments. The waterfalls at Sidonggou, where four streams drop in parallel over a wide red cliff face, are the most photographed feature in the park.
Getting to Chishui from Zunyi takes three to four hours by road; there is no direct train. The park divides into east and west sections; the east section around Shizhang waterfall and the bamboo forests is the more accessible and the more visited. Allow a full day from Zunyi, or preferably stay a night in Chishui town and cover both sections. The bamboo forests are genuinely dense and tall — stands of Neosinocalamus affinis reaching fifteen metres — and the walk through them between viewpoints is as rewarding as the Danxia formations themselves. Spring and early summer, when the waterfalls are at full flow, is the best season.