"Twenty years ago, we had only a few vehicles," she says, adjusting her cap against the midday sun. "Now we have more than 100."

　　But she says the one thing that has never changed is that "protection always comes first".

　　At the entrance to the Youyou Trail, a 2.2-kilometer route of packed earth and wood winding through ancient trees, Wang points out the wooden decks to her guests.

　　"When we built these trails, we didn"t cut a single tree. We built around them. You can see the planks curve around the trunks. The trees stayed," she says.

　　Asked what changes she has noticed in the landscape over the years, Wang thinks for a moment.

　　"Visually, not much. It looks the same to me," she says. "But the data tell a different story. The forest is denser. The numbers show it is improving, just slowly."

　　Summer transforms Potatso"s alpine meadows into a living tapestry of gold, violet and white — a shifting canvas shaped by millennia of geological forces. [Photo provided to China Daily]

　　Decades to flower

　　That slow rhythm is written into the very biology of this place.

　　A short walk from the main trail, Wei Jiansheng, an executive with the park"s operating company, stops beside a cluster of green leaves.

　　"This is shuihuang, or Rheum alexandrae," he says.

　　Wei visits the park regularly to oversee operations, safety and conservation. He speaks about the plants here the way someone might speak about old friends.

　　"Most of its life — 30 years, sometimes 35 — it does nothing but grow ground-level leaves," he says. "Then, in its final year, it puts everything into one flower stalk."