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 cave. 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 space 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.
