Tenglong Cave Scenic Area is located in Lichuan City, Hubei Province, about 6 kilometers away from Lichuan City District, with a total scenic area of more than 69 square kilometers, integrating mountains, water, caves and forests, and is well-known at home and abroad for its majestic, strange, dangerous, excellent and showy. Tenglong Cave is the core part of the entire scenic area, with a total area of more than 2 million square meters, which is the largest karst cave found in China and is known as the world's special cave.
⊙ "hegemon" in the cave
In August 1988, an expedition team composed of 25 Chinese and foreign cave experts spent 32 days on the spot to unveil the mystery of Tenglong Cave. This huge cave is 62 kilometers long, about 52 kilometers have been discovered, the entrance is 74 meters high, 64 meters wide, the highest height inside the cave is about 235 meters, and the diameter at the widest point is 180 meters. At present, there are 150 cave halls and about 300 branch caves, which are connected to the main cave and connected to the water cave to form a huge cave system. In this cave system, there are about 16.8 kilometers long Qingjiang River, five peaks in the cave, and more than ten underground waterfalls, forming a magical landscape of mountains in caves and caves in mountains.
The dry cave space of Tenglong Cave is huge, with a hall about 90 meters high and a width of 64 meters at the bottom, which can accommodate 15 "Dongfeng" trucks passing through at the same time and can accommodate a hotel with 20 or 30 floors. The total area within the first 9 kilometers of the main cave is 1.46 million square meters, which can accommodate 1 million people working at the same time. The Qingjiang River flows through the cave, forming many dangerous rapids and underground flat lakes. At present, a total of eight underground flat lakes have been discovered in Tenglong Cave, and tourists can go boating here, especially the lake about 1 km away from Runkou, the lake surface is open and the water surface is flat, which can be visited by more than 1,000 small boats at the same time. In addition to the large area and volume, the air in Tenglong Cave is clean and unpolluted, there are no snakes and scorpions and poisonous insects, the temperature is suitable all year round, the temperature fluctuation is extremely small, maintained at 13~18 °C, almost can be identified as a constant temperature, after continuous development in recent years, Tenglong Cave has become a well-known health care place at home and abroad.
The Demon Fog Mountain, which is about 130 meters high, has now been developed into a tourist attraction, with hundreds of stone steps built on it, and you can reach the top of the mountain by climbing the steps, which can be seen in the whole view. Although it is called the Demon Mist Mountain, there are no demons and ghosts on this mountain, and the so-called "demon fog" is actually related to the air circulation in Tenglongrun. It turns out that there is a very large subcurrent system at the bottom of the Tenglong Cave, and the early cave on the upper floor of the Tenglong Cave is the vent of this submerged flow system, and the air often flows in the cave. In summer, the temperature of the air outside the cave is much higher than the temperature of the air inside the cave, and the air temperature inside the cave is low and the humidity is high, so when the two air inside and outside the cave meet on the top of the demon fog mountain, the fog is formed.
⊙ swallowed the Qingjiang River for tens of miles
The upper reaches of the Qingjiang River gently undulated for several 10 kilometers among the lofty mountains and mountains and then arrived at the mouth of Tenglong Cave, where the river suddenly became restless, fell abruptly near the population of Tenglong Cave, and burrowed into the ground, forming a waterfall more than 50 meters wide and about 30 meters in drop. Where the waterfall falls, the rapids rush against each other like 10,000 horses, emitting a deafening roar, which can be clearly heard even thousands of meters away from the mouth of the Tenglong Cave. The mountain on the side of the waterfall is engraved with four big characters "Wolong Swallowing the River" to remind tourists that this is the predecessor of Tenglong Cave, the mouth of the Qingjiang River, and the sinkhole.
After entering the sinkhole, the water of the Qingjiang River was still surging and rushing forward a second, but in the blink of an eye, it quietly dived underground. Standing in front of the sinkhole, looking up for four weeks, the majestic mountains resembled a half-lying dragon, and the sinkhole was the blood basin of this half-lying dragon, swallowing the entire Qingjiang River in one mouthful. In fact, the Qingjiang River, which has entered the underground, is still unstable, and it is still washing the channel of the Fuliu River all day long, changing the structure of the Tenglong Cave. In fact, the entire Tenglong Cave was carved over a long period of time by the water of the Qingjiang River. Its formation time spans three geological change collapse stages. The first stage occurred between 1140~1150 meters above sea level, and slowly collapsed to 1100 meters over time, the current dry cave of Tenglong Cave was the channel of the Qingjiang undercurrent at that time, the second stage occurred in the formation period of the Demon Wu Mountain, a large rock avalanche appeared in Tenglong Cave, which changed the direction of the Qingjiang subcurrent, the Qingjiang river channel collapsed from 1100 meters to 1060 meters, which is almost the same as the height of the Qingjiang riverbed today, and the third stage collapse occurred on the surface of the Qingjiang River today, and is still going on today.
After Qingjiang entered the sinkhole, it began to flow deep in the Tenglong Cave, passing through four large underground lakes and five large underground waterfalls, creating countless underground wonders along the way, and finally flowing out through the black hole, with a total length of 16.8 kilometers.
The wonders inside ⊙ cave are shocking
The first thing you see when you enter Tenglong Cave is its first cave hall, now known as the "Welcome Hall", which is topped by a naturally formed rock vault that has been eroded by long periods of wind and rain, and the caves and crevices on the rock vault are densely packed with bats and birds. The top rock has also been eroded into a peacock-shaped rock more than 70 meters long, hanging high in the dome, and on the right side of the cave wall is a rock about 7 meters high, resembling a lion kneeling and hanging. In the middle of the welcome hall, there is a mirror-like pond called the "Dragon Shadow Pool," in which two strange rocks suddenly rise like dragons rising from the clouds.
Passing through the 2,500-meter-long reception hall, you can see three circular doors formed naturally, which are called the "Three Round Doors". There is a very peculiar spring behind the three-round gate, and there is nothing strange about the spring itself, the key is that the spring water flows from a protruding rock on the cave wall, which resembles a turtle with an extended neck, and the spring water comes out of the turtle's mouth and falls on the mushroom-shaped rock. This is the legendary "golden turtle spit jade mushroom". Not far from this scene, there is a "lotus pond" formed by the convergence of spring water, and there is a stalactite more than 20 meters high, such as the pagoda of King Tota Li, which reaches the cave sky. In the lotus pond lives a special kind of "small fish", the "small fish" is transparent all over, and all internal organs can be clearly distinguished. In fact, this creature is not a fish, but the larvae of an ancient organism called the red-spotted toothed toad.
After the lotus pond, there are scenic spots such as Baisha Dam and Fairy Cave, and then there is the light mist surrounded by Demon Mist Mountain, and there is a stalagmite halfway up the mountain, which is very similar to an arhat meditating and chanting, and the top of the mountain is lined with stalagmites, stone buds, and stone pines, like a huge stone stalactite museum. Beyond the Demon Mist Mountain, the momentum of the five-cave hall struck the mountains, and there were countless white stone stalactites hanging upside down on the top of the five-cave hall, like a forest of jade shoots. On the other hand, the rows of stone stalactites on the ground are more than 20 meters high, and the thousand layers left by the spring water are all as far as the eye can see. If you tap these jade shoots carefully, you can hear a crisp and melodious sound, like a beautiful melody echoing in the deep cave.
Continuing to explore, through the stone stalactite "forest", a huge underground canyon appeared before our eyes. This is the "Yutian Gorge", which consists of 48 branch caves, each of which resembles a separate "villa", and a naturally formed rock pillar is erected in front of the "betsu". There are a large number of stone stalactites scattered everywhere in the caves, and the underground flow formed by the gathering of spring water runs through these caves, forming several flying waterfalls falling into the sky.
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