Foray into HDR

Pheonix, Hunan

Here's my first foray into HDR.  It was about mid-day and the sun was high up but slightly against us -- leading to a lot of harsh shadows in the valley.  The contrast was really high and a lot of shadow details were lost.  I thought to myself, HDR might be the solution here. 
I was not a believer in HDR -- if that's what the scene looked like, why make it look like something that doesn't look like what you saw with your own eyes? I've seen a lot of HDR examples and I don't like most of them too fake.  I hope this is done right -- it is almost non-HDR-like.  Oh, here's the non-HDR version: