Bailong Elevator

The Bailong Elevator — "Hundred Dragons Elevator" — is the world's tallest outdoor passenger lift, a set of three double-deck glass elevator shafts bolted to a sheer quartzite cliff face in Wulingyuan Scenic Area, ascending 326 metres in approximately 2 minutes. Completed in 2002, it carries up to 50 passengers per trip and makes around 18,000 trips per day at peak season, moving visitors between the valley floor and the plateau-top trail network that accesses Yuanjiajie and the Avatar Hallelujah Mountain viewpoints. The elevator was controversial on environmental grounds when first proposed — the Wulingyuan core area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site — and the construction required blasting directly into the protected sandstone. The ride itself is spectacular: transparent glass doors reveal a close-up view of vertical cliff face, moss, and hanging vegetation during the ascent, and at the top the doors open onto the plateau's pine forest canopy and the vast panorama of pillar formations stretching to the horizon.