Cuiyun Corridor 翠云廊

About Cuiyun Corridor

A Xinhua News Agency feature reports that the area holds 20,391 cypresses over a century old, of which 7,778 survive within Jiange county itself, with an average age of 1,050 years; the oldest, known as the 'Jiange cypress' and the 'Shuaida cypress', are about 2,300 years old, and the feature calls them a 'wonder of the Shu road' and a 'living fossil of the forest'. The road's present name comes from a poem by the Qing-dynasty Jianzhou magistrate Qiao Bo, whose preface records that the Ming-dynasty magistrate Li Bi, in the Zhengde era, paved the road in stone and planted a hundred thousand cypresses along it from Jianzhou south to Langzhong and west to Zitong, trees that by Qiao Bo's time had grown thick enough to need a man's arms to span them, winding like dark dragons and shutting out the summer sun, which is why he named it Cuiyunlang.

The feature traces the trees' survival to a continuous line of protective decree and custom: the Tang Huiyao records a 773 decree forbidding cultivation or felling of trees on official roads, and the Song Huiyao Jigao records a 1116 decree punishing unauthorised felling on state-owned hillsides with eighty strokes of the cane. Jiange county has maintained a system, dating to the Ming Zhengde era, in which outgoing local officials formally hand over responsibility for the roadside ancient cypresses to their successors; in a 2020 ceremony the outgoing county head transferred responsibility for 7,803 ancient trees to the incoming county head.

What to look for

• The Jiange cypress, about 2,300 years old and 27 metres tall, one of 'Sichuan's ten great tree kings', and rated a 'most beautiful ancient tree of China' by the National Greening Commission office and the Chinese Society of Forestry.
• The Shuaida cypress, the road's other roughly 2,300-year-old tree.
• The road surface that Qiao Bo's preface says the Ming magistrate Li Bi laid in stone, from Jianzhou south to Langzhong and west to Zitong.
• The surviving stretch of the Jianmen Shu road within Jiange county, about 150 kilometres of the 250-kilometre route between Qipanguan in Shaanxi and Mianyang in Sichuan.

Location & getting there

Getting to Cuiyun Corridor

Follow the currently permitted path and arrange the return before setting out. Do not infer trail continuity or difficulty from the route name alone.

• Search for 翠云廊 with 广元市 and 剑阁县.