Travel Destinations: Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang Province, China

Mudanjiang, with a population of 767,000, is a town that may be nondescript on the first glance, but offers much more. Travellers mainly use Mudanjiang as a transit point for the nearby town of Jingpo Hu, known as Mirror Lake and the Underground Forest.

Jingpo Hu is a beautiful place where both Chinese and international travellers flock to year after year. Mirror Lake covers an area of 90sq km and 45km in length, and was formed on the curve of the Mudan River around 5000 years ago when lava fell from five volcano explosions nearby.

You can take a boat tour of Mirror Lake, which is a beautiful way to explore this remarkable place. If boats aren’t your thing, then you can take a slow hike around the lakeshore. If you want a great place to take some amazingly beautiful photos, then search for the Diaoshuilou Waterfall, located not so far away from the lake. Around 20m tall and 40m wide, during the rainy season it can swell but can evaporate to a small trickle during other times of the year.

Popular all year round, October to May is the best time to visit Mirror Lake as the rest of the year sees thousands of visitors. You can get here from Wudanjiang by train or bus. The train will take about an hour and a half to Dongjing, then an hour to Mirror Lake itself via minibus. However, these buses only run from June to September, so if you want to visit at other times, you will need to take a taxi.

The Underground Forest (Dixia Senlin) is another reason why people come to Mudanjiang. Located another 50km from Jingpo, the forest grows within the craters of volcanoes which erupted about 10,000 years ago. With 10 craters and a beautiful forest filled with pine trees, hiking here will take about an hour. You can get here from Mudanjiang by taking a bus or a train to Dongjing. From here, you can then catch a minibus to the forest. You can also catch a private taxi from Mirror Lake, but it is very expensive to do so.

You can get to Mudanjiang from anywhere in China. Buses and trains depart to and from Haerbin (taking about five hours), Suifenhe (four to five hours), Yanji (seven hours), Tumen (six hours), Jiamusi (eight hours) and Dongjing (an hour and a quarter).