A travel blogger’s grumbles about excessive fees to visit China’s national parks led to an online storm - and a small backdown
When the explorer Joseph Rock ventured into the remote mountains of Daocheng Yading of western Sichuan in 1928, he claimed to be the ‘first white man’ to see the stunning scenery and predicted the area would remain closed to outsiders for many years to come. The Tibetan sacred peaks were inaccesible by any road, and could only be reached by an arduous trek from the equally remote mountain kingdom of Muli, a week away, via dense forests and the deep canyon of the Shuiluo river.
“I felt buried in these mountain fastnesses, icebound on all sides,” he wrote in National Geographic, of his visit to the Chonggu monastery.
“Still there remain areas along that vast [Tibetan] borderland … which are most difficult of access and whose inhabitants have defied western exploration,” he added, referring to the lawless Tibetan bandits who made the mountains their hideaway and slaughtered any outsider foolish enough to go there.
The Yading area did remain closed for many decades, but ironically it was Rock’s colourful and enigmatic article in the National Geographic that led to Yading being sought out by adventurers from the 1990s onwards. When I visited in 1996, the only accomodation at Yading was a few makeshift marquees and shacks. The Chonggu monastery was a ruin.
But things changed rapidly and dramatically in the 21st century after the area was listed as a national nature reserve. Within just a few years, Yading became subject to rapid and massive tourist infrastructure development. Access roads were put in, scores of hotels built, an airport constructed nearby, and the park itself was organised into a mass visitor experience, with concrete walkways, viewing areas, shuttle buses all centred around a newly renovated and vastly expanded Chonggu monastery.
Tourists now pay a hefty fee to be bussed into the monastery’s visitor centre hub, from where they can be transported on electric carts on newly laid tarmac roads up the once pristine Chumbu valley to visit the Five Colours Lake at the foot of the mighty peak of Jambeyang and its glaciers. At busy periods such as the May and October Golden Weeks, the place is flooded with visitors.
Some still seek an off-the-beaten track wilderness experience. An increasing number of independent trekkers attempt a hike around the mountains, with most choosing the shorter 1-2 day route that goes from Five Colours Lake around the back of the mountain Shenrezig and returns to Chonggu monastery. More adventurous hikers have been doing the ‘outer kora (circuit)’, around all three mountains, which takes 5-6 days and crosses several high alpine passes.
But with Yading now receiving more than a million visitors a year, can it still be described as a wilderness destination? Even the outer kora, which traverses mostly uninhabited alpine terrain, has become so popular that Yading authorities have officially banned independent hikers from doing it. However, enforcement of the hiking ban is patchy, and generally confined to having security guards posted at likely access points during public holidays.
Whichever approach you take, a visit to Yading is not cheap. Combined entry and shuttle bus tickets cost about 350 yuan per person, per day. The high entry costs to the nature park recently led to an online revolt, when a travel blogger visiting Yading posted about his experience of having to pay special bus transport fees on top of expensive entry fees and sky-high hotel costs.
The blogger, known online as Donkey Hero, took umbrage at being told he would have to pay 120 yuan for a shuttle bus just to gain entry to Yading via the public road (no private cars are allowed into the park area). He objected, on the ground that the access road was a public highway, not private land.
His article gained widespread attention when it was published on social media in May 2026. He estimated that a family of three visiting Daocheng Yading could spend more than 1,000 yuan on entry fees before paying for accommodation or food.
Three entrance tickets at 146 yuan each would cost 438 yuan. The compulsory shuttle bus fares would add another 360 yuan, while the electric carts used to reach some of the viewpoints such as Five Colour Lake and Milk Lake would cost a further 240 yuan.
That brings the total for admission and internal transport to 1,038 yuan for a group of three people.
His article also noted that Yading accommodation costs are also substantial, particularly during peak periods, such as Golden Week. Two nights in a relatively modest hotel outside the park could easily cost 1,000 -1,500 yuan, with considerably higher prices for rooms inside the park’s scenic area.
Adding on the cost of food and other incidental expenses would push the cost of a short family visit to Yading beyond 4,000 yuan, and that’s not including the cost of travelling by car, bus or flight to and from this remote part of Sichuan.
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations illustrate just how much revenue is being generated at tourist sites such as Yading.
Official figures state that Daocheng Yading received 1.06 million visitors in 2025. Multiplying that figure by the quoted 120-yuan shuttle fare produces potential gross ticket revenue of about 127 million yuan. Add on to that another 61 million yuan in revenue from electric cart operations. That’s 181 million yuan annually from shuttle bus and electric cart fees, above and beyond the park entrance fee, which brings in 150 million yuan annually.
In total, the Yading Nature park is raking in 330 million yuan (US$50 million) annually in entry and shuttle transport fees.
The travel blogger was indignant because much of this revenue was being made by the park’s private business operators from charges to travel on public highways or on roads that had been built with funding from the national government. He noted that local government spent about 40 million yuan on road building and maintenance, and that there would be costs of running the bus and electric cart fleet. Nevertheless, he argued that the huge revenues extracted from visitors were excessive and unfair.
The article caused a national outcry and led to the Yading government cutting the cost of the shuttle bus by 20 yuan for the summer season.
In a follow up article, the travel blogger dismissed this temporary measure as a token gesture, and shared comments from readers that noted similar exorbitant fees were common at other national tourism destinations such as the Hukou Falls in Shaanxi.
He said the ‘bus ticket fee’ article raised wider questions of who owns the landscape, and who gets to charge the public to visit China’s national attractions. He was particularly critical of local governments working in collusion with tourism operators to maximise revenue and using ‘ecological protection’ as an excuse for restricting access and to charge high prices for transport.
“The mountains may belong to everyone. Increasingly, however, reaching them seems to depend on paying whoever controls the road,” he concluded.
[UPDATE: I've since been told that Yading has now waived entry fees until the end of Octorber 2026. Visitors must still purchase the shuttle bus ticket though.]
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