张家界

I just got back from two days in 张家界！Some family friends from the US, my godparents, came to visit their son who's teaching English in Korea and stopped by our place in Beijing for a bit.

张家界 (Zhang1Jia1Jie4) is in 湖南：

It was incredibly gorgeous. Parts of it were actually kind of touristy, but Chinese touristy, so no Club Meds or Kodak huts, just fruit stands. The food, of course, was delicious. They don't like 饺子 (dumplings) much down there; it's more of a Northern thing. But the spicy food was delicious. Best 茄子 (eggplant) I've ever had in my life. In retrospect, I really should have taken some photos of the food.

The hiking trails were virtually deserted, too; it was just the base that was so crowded. Here are some photos:

We also ran into these really, really strange spider webs. It turns out they're (probably) St. Andrew's Cross Spiders, which exist all over the world and aren't venomous. From Wikipedia, on the X-part of the web in the first picture (called a "Stabilimentum"):

There is much controversy surrounding the function of these structures, and it is likely that different species use it for different purposes. Some people believe that they provide protection to the spider by either camouflaging it or making it appear larger. Another theory is that they make the spider visible and therefore animals such as birds are less likely to damage the spider’s web. Originally the decorations were thought to stabilize the web (hence the term stabilimentum), but this is dismissed nowadays. One more recent theory is that web decorations attract prey by reflecting ultraviolet light. Light in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum is known to be attractive to many species of insects.

Finally, there were some nice Chinglish signs there: