Luxi River Boat Trip

The slow boat along the Luxi River is the signature experience at Longhu, and for good reason: the journey passes beneath sheer Danxia sandstone cliffs rising straight from the water, studded with the ancient wooden coffins of the Guyue people in unreachable ledges and hollows. Guides point out individual coffins and formations, and at several points along the route acrobatic performers demonstrate their own coffin-retrieval theory by free-climbing the cliff faces.

The boat trip takes about 90 minutes in each direction, with stops at scenic viewpoints along the way. The formations have been given colourful names — Immortal Finger Rock, Rhinoceros Watching the Moon, Flying Fairy Rock — and the imaginative names are more helpful than they sound for distinguishing the hundreds of individual pillars and columns. Morning trips have better light for photography; afternoon trips are less crowded.

things to do sight
A story
The cliff coffins along the Luxi River belong to an ancient people known as the Guyue, who inhabited this part of Jiangxi roughly 2,500 years ago. The coffins — some still containing skeletal remains and bronzeware — were placed in natural ledges and caves on sheer cliff faces anywhere from 10 to 60 metres above the river. The accepted theory is that they were lowered from above using ropes, but no one has definitively demonstrated how this was done with the technology available at the time.

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