Liu Chunming (Joan's Mom)
Mr. Wang (our driver)
Dan Hoyt
While on vacation in China visiting my wife's mother,
we visited two show caves in the suburbs of Beijing. They
are about an hour's drive from the city center. Beijing is
huge, probably more comparable to Los Angeles County in
size (and pollution) than to Boston. It totals 16,808 square
kilometers. The caves are located in Fozi Zhuang Fangshan
District, a coal-mining and lime-quarrying area; the road
leading in passes through places where everything is covered
with black dust, and others covered in white. In mid-morning,
we reached the first of our targets.
Qian Zhen Dong was discovered by a Buddhist monk
in 1446 AD, and has been well known and used since that
time. It is a large cave, with a known length of 2500 meters,
on five levels. Because of its name, I had hoped to see some
kind of helictites, but was disappointed. There are some, but
they are in the lower levels; only the upper two levels are
open to the public. Both levels are very densely populated
with all manner of stals, flowstone, draperies, shields,
rimstone, and popcorn. The cave is relatively warm, and
shirtsleeves are comfortable. The tour route is a loop, with a
reverse requiring that you retrace your steps only at the lowest
point. Stone Flower is the most heavily decorated cave I
have seen, similar to Carlsbad, but thicker with formations.
The chambers are on a somewhat smaller scale than Carlsbad,
but still very impressive. What was surprising to me was the
generally good condition of the formations. Had this been a
New York cave….
Visitors are admitted in groups of about fifty, led by a
tour guide wearing a red shirt. Signs outside and inside the
cave prohibit photography, and threaten fines for picturetaking.
The guides reinforce this message verbally. Sadly,
my command of Chinese left me (and many other visitors,
apparently) ignorant of this. I must confess to having used
my bourgeois Japanese camera to criminally make images
of the Peoples' Formations. Eventually, we discovered the
reasoning behind this ban on photography. Near the deepest
point in the tour, a large, flat place is roped off, and for a fee,
visitors may spend two minutes taking pictures of their
companions. It is not a very scenic place.
The cave is entered through a concrete tunnel, which
leads to the first chamber. There are three large statues of
Buddha, ca. 1456, in this room. Behind the Buddhas are
some large formations, at least one of which appears to have
been placed for visual effect. This large shield is resting on
the floor, but the ceiling above is clearly not where it
originated. Here was also our first encounter with the
preferred method of lighting in Stone Flower, consisting of
various garish-colored floodlamps. These are situated so as
to illuminate some feature the designers of the lighting
system thought significant, but also serve to obscure large
portions of the cave with their glare. Soon after entering the
cave, I began to wish I had brought my own light.
In this uppermost level, low railings about shin-height
bound the paved walking path. The guides make no attempt
to keep track of their group members, and we soon fell behind
ours. Other tourists also lagged, and also wandered out of
the path to have their pictures taken by their companions
while surrounded by the formations. The formations in this
level are inactive, and the upper cave is generally dry. This
portion consists of three or four variously large chambers
separated by narrower portals.
The drop to the second level is negotiated on metal
stairs, with bannisters on both sides. These bannisters are
continued as railings to define the walkway throughout the
rest of the tour. The formations in the second level are active,
and there is noticeably more moisture. While descending
these stairs, we were treated to the sight of a large (one meter
high) neon sign with four characters hanging from the
ceiling. It labels some important feature, which we have
forgotten the name of. A little further on is another labeled
feature, the Immortal Needle. This is a thin, wavering
stalagmite about three meters high and less than a tenth that
in thickness. To make sure that no one misses it, the
management has thoughtfully draped a string of about fifteen
blinking red lights up one side and down the other. The
effect is like aircraft warning beacons.
Chambers in the second level are larger than in the first;
they'd be respectable in New Mexico. Even with the taller
railings, some visitors managed to go off the path to gain a
better vantage for their photography. I suppose the continued
health of the formations can be partly attributed to the
severity of the legal system.
My overall impression of the cave is mixed: an awesome
assortment of very large and beautiful formations, made
difficult to appreciate by truly horrible lighting. After about
two hours, we left the cave. While running the souvenirgauntlet,
which seems standard at all the attractions we saw,
I was offered some large formations. These were obviously
taken from a cave, and I asked June to tell the vendor that I
could not buy them for conservation reasons. The answer
was that it was OK, they had been removed from Stone Flower
so the tourist walkways could be built. I could see little
chance of convincing her that this was still wrong, so I just
said it's illegal to own such things in the US. We bought one
of the official pamphlets describing the cave (mostly a lot of
pretty poor photographs of formations), got back to the car
and drove a few kilometers to our other destination, Silver Fox Cave.
