Thousands of years old Shennongjia

Covering 600 square kilometers, Shennongjia Nature Reserve is located in the west of central China's Hubei province. It is said that Shennongshi, founder of farming culture, has built a huge rack to climb the mountains here to gather herbs, thus it is named Shennongjia.

There are well-preserved geological structure of Cambrian Period, the original and deuterogenic biocenosis and abundant resources of plants and animals, as well as 193 families, 850 genera and 2638 kinds of higher vascular plants, including 34 kinds of ancient, distinctive and rare wild plants that receive state's major protection, such as Chinese dove tree, vilmorin dove tree, tetracentron sinense oliv and katsura tree, etc. There are also nearly 50 Chinese indigenous genera, 1000 Chinese indigenous categories and about 100 categories indigenous to Shennongjia region, especially abundant rare, endangered and ancient surviving species. It is China's huge green treasury and biologic genes library with high value of zoology and scientific research.

Shennongjia forest zone was included into the "Man and Biosphere Program" by UNESCO as a state-level nature reserve in 1990. The main protection targets would be the ecosystem of northern semitropical hills and forests and the distinctive and rare species.

A water fall runs down crags in Shennongjia Nature Reserve.

Snowfall in Shenongjia Nature Reserve.