The Biggest Cave in China
Found
& A Lone Family Nearby
7 November
2006
A joint
expedition team consisted of the experts
from China, England, Ireland, Australia
and Hungary has discovered, in China’s central west
Hubei Province, a group of grottoes
previosly unknown.
During this
October, the team examined the Soaring
Dragon Cave (腾龙洞). When they
further explored its depth by entering
the numerous channels and branches, they
began to realise the true scope of this
vast hidden world, which includes the
caverns with openings in the top, with
well-like cavities below, with
underground waterways across and with the
fields containing a large quantity of
mammalian fossils of the Pleistocene era,
from giant panda, ancient elephant
stegodon to goat-like serow, dating back
at least 200,000 years.
All together, the
Soaring Dragon Caves are said to have
reached nearly 60 kilometres in total
length, 2 million square metres of floor
space and 40 million cubic metres of
total space volume.
The front cave
alone has the length of 4,000 metres and
the space volume of 1275 cubic metres -
making it the longest and biggest cavern
in the world.
The entrance is
majestic, measuring 74 metres high and 64
m wide with an expansive elevational span
that could allow 15 trucks to pass side
by side. After about four kilometres of
easy walk from there, a thunderous sound
of rolling water can be heard, with the
bellowing echo from all directions. You’ve
come to the Hidden River (通伏河), a 17-kilometre-long
cave stream which is so seclusive that
few people on the earth have ever
ventured to its shore.
A bridge over the
Hidden River
Click on the image to
enlarge it
If you keep
waking, a few days later, you’ll found
yourself arriving in a magnificent forest
of dripstone, that spreads in a huge cave
chamber 8 m from the floor to ceiling and
3 kilometres from one end to the other.
Looking out from the
cave
There are
numerous back doors and side exits along
the tunnels and branches and chambers,
but most are located in the middle of the
cliff face. However, if you are lucky
enough to land in the bottom of a canyon
named Viewing Myriad of Colour (观彩峡), then you may get a cup
of warm tea with a lone family settling
in the valley. To attend the tea party,
you’ll need to squeeze through a stone
gap, and ascend a narrow passage to a
stone room where you’ll find a timber
gate opening to a spacious stone deck in
front of the farmhouse.
Surrounded by
hills on three sides with the stone gap
on another as their only linkage to the
outside world, Mr Wang and his wife live
in this one family village contentedly as
what his ancestors did, cultivating maize
and bees around, raising chickens and
cattle next door, drawing water from
mountain streams nearby and collecting
firewood in the hills behind their house.
They are like the ancient hermits living
in the 21st century. And
often, to the visitors, they are just as
fascinating as the Soaring Dragon caves.
还从峡谷穿三门，一门更比一门深。
武陵人往不知路，此地空余独家村。
(An ancient poem depicting
a lone family in a valley)
初极狭，才通人，复行数十步，豁然开朗。土地平旷，屋舍俨然，有良田美池桑竹之属。
(The Peach Flower Verse
portraying a hermit village by China’s
most celebrated hermit Tao Yuanming)
China
stories are told at wenhousecrafts.com
Pre: Red
Leaves Festival | Next: Colour
Is in the Eye of Beholders
Similar
Stories:
List of All
Stories
|
