Discover Chongqing
Wulong Karst: Three Natural Bridges
武隆天生三桥
A UNESCO World Heritage karst landscape where three colossal natural rock bridges span a collapsed cave system, with the valley floor hundreds of metres below. Scenes from Transformers: Age of Extinction and Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower were shot here.
The story
What makes this place special
The Three Natural Bridges are three limestone natural arches — Tianlong, Qinglong and Heilong, in that order from the entrance — standing in a line over a collapsed cave system in Xiannüshan, Wulong District. They form the centre of a conservation area of about 22 square kilometres that also contains tiankeng sinkholes, the Yangshui River karst canyon and Longshui Gorge, and they are part of the South China Karst World Heritage listing. The timber inn standing in the sinkhole below Tianlong bridge is not an ancient relic: it is a Tang-style reconstruction built as a film set for Zhang Yimou's 'Curse of the Golden Flower', on the site of a former courier station. The site was also used for 'Transformers: Age of Extinction', and there are film props on display.
What you’ll discover
You descend from the rim into the bottom of the sinkhole system and walk along the floor, passing under each of the three arches in turn with hundreds of metres of rock overhead and daylight coming down through the gaps between them. The route is steps down to a vertical lift, the lift down, then more steps to the valley floor, then a walk out along the bottom. The 'courier inn' sits in the middle in the open bottom of the first sinkhole.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- It is a one-way downhill walk through the valley with a shuttle bus at each end, not a loop — do not plan to come back the way you came.
- The vertical lift is the only thing that makes the descent reasonable, but there are significant flights of steps both above and below it. Reports differ on whether the lift is included in the entry arrangements, so check when you buy.
- Wulong is a long way from Chongqing city. It works much better as an overnight than as a day trip, and the high-speed rail to Wulong beats the road.
- Go on a day with some sun. The arches are photographed from below looking up through the gap, and in flat grey weather the whole valley reads as grey rock.
- Fog and heavy rain are common here and the paths get slippery. Wear shoes with grip, not sandals.
When to come
Spring or autumn, mid-morning when the sun is high enough to light the bottom of the sinkholes. Summer is hot, crowded and often foggy.
Getting around
Not possible for a wheelchair. The route is steps down into a sinkhole, a lift, then more steps, then a long uneven walk on the valley floor, with a further climb or shuttle at the exit. Someone with a bad knee should think hard: the lift removes the worst of the vertical, but there are still several hundred steps and a few kilometres of walking on wet stone with no shortcut once you are at the bottom.
Worth knowing before you go
The route is one-way and downhill, ending with a bus back up, so you do not have to re-climb. Combine it with the nearby Longshuixia Gap on the same day if you stay overnight in Wulong.
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