At over 1,000 feet tall, Yuntai Falls is revered as the highest waterfall in China. It turns out that, at the moment, it’s really more of a water feature.
Video recorded by a hiker in the Yuntai Mountain scenic area in Henan province showed water gushing out of pipes at the top of the falls, artificially creating the flow cascading over the precipice. As social media users flooded in with questions about the apparent deception, park officials released a statement Tuesday to clear things up.
“Depending on the season, I cannot guarantee that I am in my best condition whenever my friends come to see me,” the statement, written from the waterfall’s perspective, said, according to a translation from The Washington Post. “To make your experience of the journey more complete and to make you feel that it’s a worthwhile trip, I underwent a small enhancement so that I could meet my friends in better shape in the dry season.”
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An unnamed official at the site told the state-run Henan Daily news site that the falls shouldn’t be considered man-made but that it has much less water flow outside of the peak flood months of July, August, and September.
On the Chinese social media app Weibo, users were apparently unimpressed with the revelation.
“The main thing is that the water pipe is so crudely installed, others at least disguise it in a superior way,” one wrote, according to Reuters, while another claimed the pipe “does not respect the laws of nature nor the visitors.”
Others were more forgiving, arguing that using a pipe is “better than seeing no water at all” and calling the artifice a “good faith effort for the scenic area to maintain the landscape during dry periods.”
