Amir&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventure Series. 2025: Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian and Shaanxi Provinces’ Red Tour. Short videos with transcripts, captioned photos, articles and commentary. The REAL Chinese people you don’t know!

https://radiosinoland.com/2025/07/27/amirjeffs-excellent-china-adventure-series-2025-hunan-jiangxi-fujian-and-shaanxi-provinces-red-tour-short-videos-captioned-photos-articles-and-commentary-the-real-chinese-people-you-don/

Introduction

It is quite a coincidence that China, Canada and the United States are almost the same size in area. Thus, they are fun to compare for geography and terrain.

China is incredibly mountainous

China is by far the most mountainous, followed by the US and then Canada. Mountains are majestic and dramatic, which is why China seems to so many breathtaking scenic vistas. Other than the Himilayas, the vast majority of non-Chinese have never heard of the other ranges,

Nature parks are national pride around the world

They don’t have to be high altitude to be spectacular. Some of the most famous mountains and their nature parks in China are in the eastern half of the country, full of history and religion. All these peaks afford the Chinese to have what seems an endless list of national, regional, provincial and county nature parks. I feel very privileged to have visited a number of them over my 16 years in China.

Surprising stats on protected areas by country

China is just getting started, working to have more national parks than any other country be 2035. The table below shows the Top Eleven countries/regions with the biggest percentage of their land and waters under protection, with large countries added, like Russia, China, Canada, the US, Indonesia and Brazil added,

The most obvious commonality of the Top Eleven, other than Brazil and Greenland, is that they are all on the small side. Size matters. Russia is at the bottom of the list, but is almost twice the size of China, the US or Canada, so you can effectively double its impact on a comparison basis.

Some are really surprising. Hong Kong is 42% protected, but you don’t see it unless you get out of the concrete jungles of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island and onto its numerous unihabited islands and in New Territories, along the border with Shenzhen.

Socialist Venezuela is under endless attack from Judeo-Western empire, yet is #3 in the world for protected areas.

China is gunning for #1 on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site List

China is #2 on the list of countries with World Heritage Sites, just behind Italy. Italy has 40 more sites on UNESCO’s Tentative List, whereas China has 58 more in the pipeline. China will be at the top of the list in a few years, with all the applications it has pending.

Luoxiaoshan Great Rift Park

The regional park presented below is Luoxiaoshan Great Rift Park, outside Jinggangshan. It is a 100-million-year-old geological wonder of two mountain ranges that collapsed into each other, creating a rift valley, like in East Africa, but on a much smaller scale. As you will see below, the Mao Era took advantage of its formation to build a hydro-electric dam and create a beautiful lake.

Videos

#1

Transcript

Well, here we are in the Luoxiao Mountains. This is not one of the tens, not hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands of dams that were built during the Mao era from 1949 to 1976. Today, nine of the 10 largest lakes in China were built during the Mao Era.

You have been told that he killed 80,000,000 people. That he was a monster. But, they built tens of thousands of dams. They reclaimed hundreds of thousands of kilometers of riverbank to control erosion and flooding. They installed hundreds of thousands of kilometers of irrigation systems. In the Mao era, they increased GDP by six times, agricultural production by three times. In less than twenty-five years, China went from having a steel industry the size of Belgium’s to being the sixth biggest industrial powerhouse on Planet Earth.

So, this is why I can just tell you over and over and over again. And Amir will agree with me: everything you have been told about China is a lie. It’s just an absolute lie. You have been lied to all of your life.

You just have to come out and see for yourself. Out here, when we’re in the middle of nowhere in the Jiangxi province. You know, this is really, really remote. And, there are thousands of lakes and dams like this, all over the countryside. Some of them are so small that I used to see them. They are maybe only 10 or 20 meters wide to provide electricity for a village, and they were all built during the Mao Era.

#2

Transcript

Amir, you wanna say hello to the camera? Alright. Well, as we said, this is what they call the Great Rift Valley. A hundred million years ago, two mountain ranges collapsed on each other and created this great rift. That’s what we’ve just been going up.

And you can see the flags down there, when we took a when we took pictures with the communist flag at the end. Here is the great rift, that’s between the two mountain ranges. Now, a hundred million years later, this mountain range is called Luoxiao. It is a mountain range that is on the border of Eastern Hunan Province and Western Jiangxi Province. Just really spectacular.

Can you imagine the fascist KMT and Chiang Kai-Shek trying to fight the communists in this kind of territory? Unbelievable. And there wasn’t a lake then. That was built during the Mao era.

#3

Transcript

So, we climbed up this side of a mountain with this chain. Without the chain, you couldn’t do it. It’s already dangerous, but without the chain, it would be suicidal.

But it’s amazing. The Chinese are incredibly fearless about this kind of stuff. We have over sixteen years living here, we have just seen that they don’t have they don’t they don’t seem to fuss about dangerous situations. I mean, I’ve seen them, you know, doing this kind of stuff in, you know, high heels and it’s just unbelievable how nonchalant they are about, doing things that are a little bit edgy.

#4

Transcript

This is kind of like fortune telling. It costs 2.99 yuan about 25¢ to do an I-Ching reading. You put your hand there in the middle and I think it should spin. I don’t know. Then in the lower left-hand corner is that black slot, is where you get your reading.

Of course, you can see that people have left heart-shaped motifs all around it!

#5

Transcript

Here we are in the middle of this park and people start putting up these Buddhist streamers, tying them on trees as votives, you know, as prayers. And of course, I just prayed at the little Guanyin temple/altar. People just keep adding them and adding them and adding them. It’s a really nice atmosphere.

#6

Transcript

This is reportedly the largest water covered pavilion in the world! We gotta get something to drink, man. We are really, really dehydrated. Alright…

#7

Transcript

More of Luoxiao Mountain Gorge Park. Just really, really beautiful. Out here on the border of Hunan and Jiangxi Provinces.

Photos by Amir

#1: while they prepared our boat to ride up to the end of the lake and take a hike from there, we had a chance to admire the beautiful surroundings.

#2:the Mao Era built many tens of thousands of hydroelectric dams like Luoxiaoshan. Nine of China’s current ten biggest reservoirs were built during the Mao Era, with Three Gorges being at the top of the list. Three Gorges will be dwarfed by China’s newest hydroelectric behemoth in Tibet, called Motou Hydropower Station. Started in July 2025, it is three times bigger than Three Gorges, is costing 1.2 trillion yuan ($167.1bn). The Mao Era continues to inspire the Chinese people to this day.

#3:in spite of it being peak tourist season – July – there were not that many visitors. Part of it is due to the fact that it is so darn isolated and most people come for Red Tours, not so much nature.

#4: up top on the boat’s viewing platform.

#5: you can clearly see the collapse of one of the mountain ranges here. That’s 100-million-year-old rock.

#6: at the end of the lake you can clearly see the rift between the two ancient mountain ranges.

#7: Chinese parks have a lot of information presented in at least Chinese and English. You will also see Japanese, Korean (above), Russian and sometimes French.

#8: Chinese children love to fill up visitor certification booklets for all the parks, museums and attractions that they visit.Several of these boxes were seen on the walk after the boat ride.Inside is a big stamp or embosser that they will fill up the pages in this park’s book. Then, when they go back home, they have great educational souvenirs and bragging rights with their friends.

#9: this certification station is an embosser, leaving a raised seal on the page, like a notary public.

#10: the walking trails in Chinese parks are usually world class: paved with protective guard rails, bathrooms and vending machines. The wood-looking rails are actually composite concrete on rebar or steel. They are as solid as a rock.

#11: in the wilds, there’s always plenty of fauna and flora. This magnificent articulated beetle was stunning.

#12: I do practice Buddhism, so am sincerely praying here. It’s actually an altar to the Goddess Guanyin, who is the great font of compassion, hearing the voices of the suffering. That’s one aspect of Buddhism I like, female figures play a very important role. In Taiwan Province, we live close to a temple for the Earth Mother and in Puli, there is a fabulous temple to Mazu, the Mother Goddess. Being very syncretic, that framed picture is of Buddha.

#13:Amir and I are climbing down a rather trecherous trail hugging the side of a mountain. It would have been impossible without the chain rail bolted into the mountain face to hang onto.

#14: this suspension bridge immediately caught our eyes, with the flag of the Communist Party of China at the other end on the left.

#15:keep lying to yourself that the Chinese people are not communist!

#16: in the middle of nowhere, we walked into a very nice hot spring spa. Being foreigners in a place where foreigners are not supposed to be, we had several people who were excited to talk to us. One thing led to another and a group of them invited us to a very nice lunch, including beer and maotai. Three cheers and bon appétit!

I’m telling you, it’s just hell in China!

#17: for decades, I saved all my entry tickets, boarding passes and other memoribilia, with boxes of them in storage. The last few years, I take photos and then recycle them.

The roundtrip boat ride cost Amir ¥188, or about €22.50. Me? Free, since I’m over 65! If seniors have to pay, the tickets are 50% off, but usually free. Amir and I joked about it a lot during our journey.

BON VOYAGE!

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The China Trilogy has everything you want to know about the Chinese people that you will NEVER learn inside the Judeo-West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine:

https://radiosinoland.com/2018/06/30/praise-for-the-china-trilogy-the-votes-are-in-it-r-o-c-k-s-what-are-you-waiting-for/

AND

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00TX0TDDI/allbooks

Connect with China Writer Amir Khan! He is your Dr. Shakespeare, who lives and works in Sinoland…

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https://fsc.hunnu.edu.cn/info/1103/10302.htm

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https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003464334/death-hamlet-amir-khan

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-59894-9

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