What started as an exciting trip turned tragic for the family of a tourist who was killed when a cable car snapped off the cableway at a popular mountain resort in Jiangxi Province last Saturday.

Authorities said an equipment failure caused the cable car to fall off the cable way, killing one tourist and injuring four others at Mount Dujuanshan. The name of the fatality has not been disclosed and the city government spokesman did not provide further details.

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The accident also caused other cable cars to stop along the 5,200-meter cable way, leaving 219 tourists stranded in their cars for nearly six hours. All of the stranded tourists were brought back to the ground safely while the four other injured tourists were rushed to the hospital.

"It happened so fast I just noticed that one of the cars fell when other tourists started screaming," one tourist told local reporters.

Mount Dujuanshan, popularly known by tourists as Pen Rack Mountain, has an average altitude of 1,358 meters, although authorities did not disclose at what point of the cable way the car fell. The famous mountain resort got its name from its 17 peaks that resemble aligned pens.

Aside from the magnificent view that the cable tour affords tourists, Mount Dujuanshan is also popular in China because it was in the mountain resort that the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong set up a revolutionary base in 1927.

Last year, 78 tourists were rescued after hours of getting trapped in cable cars in the Yaoshan mountain scenic spot in Guilin, Guangxhi.

No casualties were reported in the incident that involved 200 rescuers. The tourists included some foreigners, said officials of Guilin tourism bureau.