This is what the landscape looks like after hiking six kilometers up the mountain behind Xijiang. Collective forest of shamu (Cunninghamia lanceolata) with a mix of various broadleaf species. Took awhile, but we finally found a place flat enough to run a transect. Sllpping and sliding and everything that you grabbed when you started to fall had a thorn on it (Smilax). [NOTE: Flat is used in a relative sense here. The site where we put the transect was anything but flat].