bless the Appalachian Trail in the
United States the Camino de Santiago in
Spain and up cometh Eden in Sweden there
are some of the most famous hiking
trails in the world and now China hopes
it can add one of its own to the list
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this is a chaerephon trail stretching 60
miles across China's southwestern Hunan
province the trail runs from the
mountains of whooshing silhouette lands
of cinema a very very rich culture in
the landscape because agriculture plays
a very very important role for China
Dennis who is from Hunan Province and he
works with a local team to design
China's first world-class hiking trail
one that will offer a window into an
unseen part of the country I am from
this province and then having living
abroad for this lon I do understand
actually this place is is that amazing
that will you know meet the demands for
the Western audience he teamed up with
Leon McCarran an avid adventurer could
spend six months in 2012 walking across
China from the Gobi Desert to Hong Kong
this is just trying to to bottle that
experience that I find eight years ago
across five thousand kilometres of
walking in China and condense it down
into hundred kilometres and something
that people can do in a week off work
but what makes a hiking trail
world-class first a hiker should be able
to walk the chill without having to
follow someone else the trail starts
with a ten mode trek from pushing Sun a
mountain village at four thousand three
hundred and thirty feet and takes you on
a steady climb to the Asian rice
terraces of Shan Bay there are multiple
ways in which a hiker can navigate along
the path so they have digital data they
have paper maps
they have descriptions of the day stages
and there also be way markings along the
trail which is just strips of pins
that's helped someone orientate
themselves in the right direction the
trail makes use of ancient abandoned
paths that even locals never knew
existed we have members of our trail
crew who are from this wider local area
and up in those mountains we had people
who live in some of those little
villages and as soon as we took them
even just two or three kilometers onto
our trail they told us that they'd never
seen these places before for each fears
of our process of creating this trail we
just cover hundreds of kilometers and
sometimes we do that's on foot by
walking sometimes we use Martin bikes
sometime a lot of little trails like
this one that we're on right now and
often we'll just arrive villages and
people will just look at us like we're
from a different planet and they're
always completely friendly and we're
often invited in and given snacks and
given directions
that's a deep privilege for us to be the
first people to come through I find out
pretty exciting the Chevron trail is one
of the many rural areas in China that's
opening up to tourism thanks to an
ever-expanding high-speed rail system
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and with growing investments in resorts
and restaurants domestic tourists from
nearby cities I started making Galway
City stress on mountains to Pompey it
will help us with my province to have
more international visitors and then you
will help us Lee you know the Econo
economy growth for this province and
also you know especially for the you
know rural places so this will make me
very happy to see my home province you
know growth and also those villages
exposure we want this to be something
that's like one of the only ways that
you'll be able to see really get under
the skin and right into rural China and
I've never yet find anything that does
it this is probably the best window that
we find yet into that unseen while
beautiful cultural version of China