Tulugou National Forest Park 吐鲁沟

About Tulugou National Forest Park

The Lanzhou Morning Post feature sets out the park's setting and extent. It says Tulugou National Forest Park lies in the heart of the Liancheng forest area in Yongdeng County, 160 kilometres from Lanzhou, and that it is the province's first forest park and a natural landscape area whose main subject is remarkable mountains and water. It records that Tulugou was opened as Gansu's first forest scenic tourist area in 1984 and that by 2019 the province had 22 national-level forest parks. The park, it says, can be divided into the Front Tulugou forest scenic area, the Small Tulugou forest scenic area, Sancha tourist village and the Tulugou grassland recreation area, with rivers running at the foot of the slopes, flowers along the valley floor, scrub meadow on the tops and clear streams in the deep valleys running for tens of kilometres.

The same feature describes the park's named sights as a walk through it. The first, at the gate, is a rock on the facing cliff likened to a male lion raising its head and roaring, called the Greeting Lion. Further along, three linked peaks are likened to three brothers standing shoulder to shoulder and called the Three Peaks Vying in Beauty. Halfway up there is a water cave whose mouth is small and bell-shaped, holding water that is clear as a mirror and neither freezes in winter nor stagnates in summer, and on a bend a peak has a natural opening in its top 22 metres high and 9 metres wide, through which sky and cloud show; in rain the water forms a silver curtain across it, and at sunset and on moonlit nights the light makes shifting columns through the opening. Beyond Tongtian Gate four huge peaks rise into the clouds, likened to four guardian figures, and looking south from there two abrupt peaks stand in the forest with densely wooded tops, likened to a camel swimming through a sea of trees. Not far from the practice terrace a lone peak rises like a tower and stands like a giant brush, with a tree growing naturally on its summit like a flower at the tip of the brush. Deep in Big Tulugou, the feature says, there is a sight called Stone Wall Spilling Pearls, where a thin stream falls several tens of metres from a cliff like a hanging curtain of pearls, gathers in a pool below and then falls again to form a two-tier waterfall with a drop of nearly 100 metres, which the article describes as a rare and magnificent scene on the Loess Plateau.

The park's rhododendron is described in the same feature. On slopes above 3,000 metres it says the park has large areas of alpine rhododendron, including the strongly scented rhododendron, the Qinghai rhododendron and the golden-backed rhododendron, with varied flower shapes and colours, flowering in May and June to form a high-mountain flower sea.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism listing gives the park in a wider route context. One of its Gansu rural tourism routes runs Lanzhou, Hekou old town, Yongdeng County, Tulugou National Forest Park, Yongdeng Liancheng old town, the bitter-water rose garden and back to Lanzhou as a two-day route, and the listing describes the park as having remarkable peaks, splendid cloud and mist, varied springs and waterfalls and rich biodiversity, calling it a fine place for eco-tourism. The same entry says Yongdeng Liancheng old town consists of the Lu tusi office, the Miaoyin temple and the tusi garden.

Neither source gives opening hours, ticket prices or any statement of which paths, cableways or shuttle services operate, so the catalogue's caution that mountain roads, cableways and paths change with the weather stands, and no source reached here mentions a cableway or shuttle at all. The Lanzhou Morning Post feature is a round-up of the province's forest parks, so its descriptive writing and its comparisons of rock shapes to animals and objects are the paper's own and are reported as such, and its 'first forest park' formulations rest on the article alone, no government park list having been consulted in this round. The ministry listing is a route promotion entry rather than a survey. Neither page states how the park is currently managed or whether the whole route described is open.

What to look for

• The natural opening in the peak top that the feature gives as 22 metres high and 9 metres wide, through which the sky and cloud show
• The Stone Wall Spilling Pearls waterfall, which the feature describes as a two-tier fall with a drop of nearly 100 metres
• The alpine rhododendron on slopes above 3,000 metres, which the feature says flowers in May and June
• The Greeting Lion rock at the gate and the Three Peaks Vying in Beauty further along the route
• Tongtian Gate, with the four peaks the feature describes rising above it

Location & getting there

Getting to Tulugou National Forest Park

Check weather, trail access and the last return service. A mountain or forest area is not one entrance, and a map’s central pin may be far from the trailhead.

• Search for 吐鲁沟 with 兰州市 and 永登县.