Butterfly Mountain, (Nanshan and Turtleshan)

On Saturday we traveled an excruciating 6 hours round-trip to climb up a different mountain on the other side of the city. (Side note: it's unbelievable how long it takes to get around this city, which is spread out west to east along the coast. We could've driven from Urbana to Chicago in the time it took us to get across Shenzhen). It was definitely worth it, though, because, as our friend Jeanette told us, there was some huge mass of butterflies at the foot of the mountain.

Unfortunately, the pictures don't quite do it justice, but, as Jeanette said, there were more butterflies there than the sum of all the butterflies we'd ever seen before. There were honestly thousands of butterflies flitting through the air and covering the trees like blue and black leaves. When Andy shook the branches of the trees, giant, swirling clouds of butterflies took to the air, making all the people there gasp.

(Andy Edit: They build bridges a little crooked in shenzhen)

The mountain was a lot smaller than our local Wutongshan, which was quite a relief. Climbing the mountain offered its own charms, of course. The view was really cool, and we could see the oddly balanced bridge from Shenzhen to Hong Kong. There were also cute elephant benches and a fun turtle statue.