A Secret River
Beneath Beijing
4
Sep 2007
About five years ago in a
freezing cold winter day, two Chinese
villagers who shared their taste for exotic
meat chased a badger in the western slope of
the Motuo Mountain situated in the
outskirts of Beijing near the General’s
Pass (将军关) in the Great Wall
The badger had a quality of a
experienced guerrilla fighter and quickly
vanished into a small cave about half a meter
in diameter at the entrance. The meat-lovers
were seemingly overtaken by their passion for
hunting down their game, and used fire to
smoke the besieged out of its refugee camp.
But the cave, peculiarly, appeared like a
black hole, keeping sucking in the smoke
without puffing out. After a lengthy
scratching of their heads, eventually the
amateur hunters noticed a smoke in a short
distance curling up from a narrow gap between
the rocks.
The pair rushed over for an
investigation. After they removed some stones
in front of the gap, a one-metre wide cave revealed itself. And
the grotto looked so deep and mysterious that
it produced no echo when stones were thrown
in.
At that point, the hunters
decided to invade the case. Once edged in,
they soon found themselves stepping into an
entirely different season: outside was cold
and dry, but here, the air was humid and
warm.
They revisited the cave the
next day with searching lights and ropes to
brave through the hot fog. After crawling
their way down for about 70 metres which took
them two hours to complete, they began to
feel the thick air flewing more briskly.
Gradually the narrow tunnel widened up and
eventually expanded into a giant hall with
about 200 sqms floor area and over ten metres
in height. Around they saw countless accesses
to smaller caves and tunnels, while on the
rocky surface dampen sands were abundant and
the wet marks clearly visible. From a short
distance, the sound of flowing water was
heard.
Ever since their first
adventure into that deep and dark region, the
pairs lost their initial obsession over the
badger and developed a new passion for the
underground stream, to the point that they
spent their whole savings on digging a tunnel
leading to the secret river. Tow years later,
a 70-metre long passageway supported by
timber columns was materialised.
The latest preliminary
examination by experts confirm that this
1.5-billion-year old river was 1500 meters
long with the deepest part measuring 3 metres
and the shallowest part just over one metre.
Alongside the watercourse which in some
phrases is big enough to sail a boat, the
crystal-like stones were growing upwards from
the cave floor and stalactites hanging
everywhere in the ceilings. That is a world
of magic.
Stalactites in Stone
Flower Cave in Beijing, which has a total
length of 1 kilometres with the biggest
grotto containing six vertical layers.
Beneath this six storey natural terrace
structure is a basement that is the home
to a hidden stream.
The Stone Flower Cave
was first discovered by Buddhist
Monk Round Broad
(圆广) in 1446 in the Ming dynasty. During the World
War II, the invading Japanese armies
occupying Beijing made a doomed attempt
to retrace the footsteps of Round Broad
but only got themselves badly injured
before ventured down from the entrance
floor. It was until quite recently, a
expedition down the basement was
complete.
