Mid-Autumn at Shenxianju

After a one night and one day stay in Linhai we made the hour long trip to Xianju where we stayed the night. The next day we went to Shenxianju, a magnificent and lesser known mountain attraction in Zhejiang.

Shenxianju (神仙居景区):

Shenxianju is a grand mountain walkway attraction with many unique bridges and look out points to soak in a breathtaking view of cliffs and a lush, green countryside. The massive cliffs and high walkways give the feel like it’s Zhejiang’s smaller Zhangjiajie. The park’s unique bridges really steal the show as you can see in the image slider. Shenxianju covers an area 158 square kilometers and in 2007 Xianju county celebrated its 1000th year anniversary since its founding in 1007 AD. The cliffs have many mythical interpretations which you may read up on in these two sites here and here if you are interested.

How to get there:

It is located near Xianju which unfortunately does not have a train station to make transportation rather straightforward. You will have to take the train to Taizhou where you may catch a bus to Xianju and either catch another bus to the scenic area or call a cab/didi to take you to the park entrance. You can find information on the buses here. I chose to drive to make things much easier and my car rental was probably about the same as the train + bus tickets but with a lot more flexibility.

Price:

Park Entrance – 110 CNY (I’m seeing other websites reporting 55 CNY for the ticket price but we were charged double this. I don’t know if/when it changed or if we just got swindled).

Chairlift Ticket – 120 CNY

My Trip:

We drove from Xianju and arrived at the north entrance in the late morning. As we made it to a roundabout after some of the tourist information sites we found that the rode was blocked due to the fact that the parking lot had reached capacity. The officers told us that we could either go back to the tourist center and use the sightseeing bus to reach the entrance or we could make the 15 minute drive down to the south gate. We chose to go to the south gate which I believe turned out to be a good move in the end. I recently read many reviews on the Trip APP and many people mentioned long wait times for the chairlift and were a bit disgruntled about how long it took to get up to the mountain. The north entrance is the more popular entrance so I believe we lucked out in avoiding crowds and long wait times by using the south entrance. We were able to immediately hop on the lift and we had the cabin all to ourselves. However, afterwards as I read more about the park I saw a recommendation to climb the north side as apparently there are more sites and to take the lift down the south side. In this case I guess ignorance is bliss as I was still content with the visit even though we may have missed some things. It is up to you and also depends on your unique circumstances. From the south entrance we followed the route as you can see from the above image. By using the south entrance it also seemed that we missed a lot of steps and climbing which was nice for a hot afternoon, meaning walking in the opposite direction would’ve lead to even more steps. Though we didn’t see every attraction, we were still rather satisfied with this loop which took about 2 – 3 hours of leisurely walking and view soaking.

Pros:

  • Great views
  • Interesting bridges
  • Bit of an adrenaline rush from the cliff walks
  • Lesser known location

Cons:

  • Expensive
  • Hard to get to
  • Can be crowded