To drive 99 hairpin bends to get to heaven is sheer hell.

[Gregorius]

The Tian Men Shan Big Gate Road, or more simply Tianmen Winding Mountain Road, which is located in the northwestern province of Hunan within the Tianmen Mountain National Park, looks like a road built centuries ago, instead it is a work closer to our times, as it was started in 1998 and finished eight years later. This apparent antiquity-or rather than the fact that it originated at the turn of the third millennium-is explained by the recent tourist exploitation of this area. A place around Mount Tianmen (about 10 kilometers south of the city center of Zhangjiajie Hehua) and which has as its greatest attraction the so-called Gate of Paradise, which is accessed by a very long staircase of 999 steps, a number this is not accidental since in Chinese culture it represents eternity.

At the end of the road, a long straight and steeply sloping ramp leads to a wall in the mountain in which a large 'hole' opens, forming an arch in the rock of undoubted emotional appeal but of no real religious value.
It is true that it evokes the entrance to an otherworldly dimension, but it has well-known origins: it was formed by a landslide and was subsequently carved out by water and weathering.

In addition to the 99-curve road, which is 11 kilometers long and starts at 200 meters above sea level and rises to 1,300 m, attractions not to be missed in this area include the cable car (7,455 meters long and featuring an unusual 37-degree incline) leading to the top of the mountain; the glass walkways, the 'coiled dragon' walkway on the mountain sides, and the cliff-hanging walkway. Due to the complexity of its layout, this road is not open to public traffic but only to buses that travel it ten times round trip during the day. (daily from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., during park opening hours).

Private users must apply for special permits, and several times in recent years the hellish hairpin bends of this serpentine road that wraps around the park's green mountains have served for tests and speed trials.