It took Moyangjiang 780,000 years to build the palace for Yangchun

The distance from the river surface at the bottom of Yangchun Lingxiao Rock to the "dome" of the cave is 177 meters. It took 780,000 years for the Yandi River to walk down this distance.

For 780,000 years, the Yandi River has not been wasted. Every drop of water and every ounce of its strength is building a brilliant design - 19 beautiful and magnificent giants. A palace supported by pillars! This is the ultimate cave!

The unquestionable "No. 1 Cave in the South"

Lingxiao Rock is located in Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province, at the end of the Yunwuling Mountains 66 kilometers northwest of Yangchun City, among the Luoyang Peak Forest. Covering an area of ??36.7 square kilometers, it is characterized by karst landforms and was rated as a National Geopark in early 2004.

The internal height of Lingxiao Rock is 177 meters from the river surface. There are three floors in the cave: upper, middle and lower. According to the order of entry, from bottom to top are Zhihan Hall, Lingxiao Hall and Observation Hall. Taiwan, currently has an open tourist area of ??more than 30,000 square meters. In 1945, Wu Dingxin, the former president of Kuomintang University, visited this place. Seeing that the place was "majestic and spacious, with beautiful scenery and open sky", he happily named it "Zhihan in the Sky". From then on, the cave was named Lingxiao Rock, and the Zhihan Hall on the first floor got its name from this.

Walking along the winding Yandi River, you will be surrounded by towering mountains. A mountain cliff in the middle is exposed, and a huge hole almost hollows out one-third of the mountain. The opening of the first-floor hall of Lingxiao Rock is 105 meters deep, 60 meters high, and 36 meters wide. Just using the word "big" to describe it is far from enough. It can fit into a building with more than ten rooms wide and twenty floors high. What's more, there is a beautiful countryside outside the hall, and there is a winding and clear river in the hall. You can take a boat across the hall to go to Yunfu City, a foreign country. Dare I ask which hall in the world is comparable to Ling Xiao?

If ordinary people heard that they had to walk up to the 40th floor, I am afraid they would all refuse in unison! Climbing up to Lingxiao Rock from Zhihan Hall, you are attracted by the wonderful scenery everywhere, and you reach the 128-meter-high observation deck without knowing it. We were obsessed with taking pictures on the way, and were surpassed by an uncle and aunt from the "Sunset Red" elderly tour group who entered the cave after us.

The reason why Lingxiao Rock can be called a "palace" is not because of its large scale, but because of the 19 unparalleled gorgeous stalactite pillars in the Lingxiao Hall on the second floor of the cave. Those stalactite pillars with a diameter of 1 to 3 meters and a height of 30 to 50 meters, with stone flowers blooming in layers, are placed in other caves. Any one of them can be called the "treasure of the cave." At Lingxiao Rock, they were erected along both sides of the second-floor hall, setting up a grand display.

Stalactites are slowly formed by water seepage deposits in cave rock crevices. How slowly? After sawing the stalactites open, researchers found that the interior of the stalactites was like a tree, with each stalactite having its own growth rings. Depending on the climate and hydrology, it may take one hundred to one thousand years to form each centimeter of height or thickness.

Alongside the walking path inside the cave, you can occasionally see cracked stone pillars, revealing the layer-by-layer texture like a thousand-feuille cake inside. The tight part represents a stable climate, and slow flowing water continues to bring about the deposition of calcified materials. When stratification occurs, it means that a special climate has occurred and deposition has stopped. The climate recovered and deposition continued. From the layering thickness of stalactites, we can infer the law and duration of climate rotation changes.

Lingxiao Rock is gorgeous, what level can it reach? Professor Zhu Xuewen, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the Chinese Cave Research Society, and Chen Weihai, director of the Cave Research Center of the Institute of Karst Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, are experts at the forefront of karst research in the world and have "visited countless caves" in their lives. In 2004, two scholars visited Lingxiao Rock. After careful comparison and evaluation, they concluded that Lingxiao Rock is at the forefront of the discovered caves in China and is worthy of the title of "The First Cave in the South". This evaluation undoubtedly guaranteed Ling Xiaoyan's status in the world.

The environment inside Lingxiao Cave is special. There are various stalactites growing around the cave wall, some of which look like Ganoderma lucidum. Professor Zhu pointed out: "The stone pillars and stalagmites in Lingxiao Rock are the typical palm flake shapes in karst landforms (a common international name, and some domestic scholars also named them 'Shiganingzhi'). The complete types and quantity of 'Shiganingzhi' in Lingxiao Rock The number, size, and age of its growth are absolutely unique in China and extremely rare in the world. This place can definitely be called the 'World Stone Ganoderma Kingdom.'" This is another extremely high praise!

Amazing! The power of time and rivers

Speaking of the beautiful palace in Lingxiaoyan, we have to talk about Yandi River. Yandi River is a little-known river. The existing river channel is only six or seven meters wide. In autumn, the river water is only about forty centimeters deep. It is not ranked among the eight major tributaries of Moyang River. Why was this "palace" built on the Yandi River?

The Moyang River passes through hard karst rock formations in the middle and upper reaches, but the landforms of the middle reaches and the upper reaches are obviously different.

The upper reaches are mainly mountainous, and the surrounding area of ??Lingxiao Rock is a peak cluster landform. The middle reaches are narrow valley basins and small plains, with a small number of karst peaks and isolated peaks. Such landforms are related to a series of mountain ranges in the middle and upper reaches of the Moyang River.

Facing the sea, on the right side of Yangchun is the 1337.6-meter-high Ehuangzhang of Hewei Mountain (Bajia Mountain), known as the "Roof of Yangjiang", on the left is the 1258-meter-high Tianlu Mountain, and behind it is the 1704-meter-high Ehuangzhang Mountain. meters of Yunwu Mountains, and more than 80 peaks with an altitude of 1,000 meters across Yangchun from northeast to southwest. Behind the Yunwu Mountains, there is the taller Yunkai Mountains in the same direction. The high wall-like mountains block the monsoons and typhoons from the ocean, making Yangchun a place where warm and cold air currents meet, producing a large amount of rainfall at the front of the mountains, making it one of the rainstorm centers in South China, with an average annual rainfall of up to 3428.9 mm. Compared with the spring and summer flood seasons of ordinary rivers, the Moyang River has one more typhoon flood season in summer and autumn every year. The strong tide pushed by the typhoon blocked the outlet of the Moyang River, and the stagnant river water overflowed the river channel, forming a floodplain area in the entire valley.

River tail, sky dew, clouds and mist, the names of the mountains around Yangchun are full of "moisture", which made me look at the mountains in other parts of Guangdong a few more times, but no more I found the name of a mountain with such high "humidity". On the autumnal equinox, it is a cloudy day without rain. The relative humidity throughout the day in Yangchun is 77%, and the maximum humidity reaches 95%. It is hard to imagine that in the season of "high autumn air", there is still weather that can squeeze out water. The real background of the name Moyang River is "there is no sunny day" or is it the hope that "there will be no floods"!

The eternal mountains have continued to bring frequent floods to the middle reaches of the Moyang River. That kind of power has dismembered this hard karst rock slab and flattened the river channel that the Moyang River passes through. It has swept out river valleys and plains like Chunwan where karst solitary peaks stand and lakes and mountains complement each other. The annual floods bring fertile soil to this river valley, making it the largest rice-producing area in Yangchun. As a result, the people of Yangchun have a home with abundant water and grass.

Lingxiao Rock is located just upstream of the Moyang River. The back of this high wall has avoided the sharp edge of heavy rain and rapids. Its geographical latitude and climatic environment allowed the water kinetic energy gathered in the Rock Bottom River Basin to carve out a grand enough cave hall. The surface water received by the rock gaps in the Lingxiao Rock mountain provides a rich source of materials for the development of Lingxiao Rock stalactites.

If the strength of the Yandi River were one point greater, Lingxiao Rock might disintegrate into pieces and become a solitary peak like the Spring Bay Tongtian Candle. If there is less surface water, the beauty of Lingxiao Hall will not appear, and it may become a bare and gray dry cave. The characteristics of the terrain, coupled with the strength and softness of the Moyang River, all factors are perfectly combined to create today's Yangchun and Lingxiaoyan.

Passing through the triple gate, encountering the "Peach Blossom Spring" in western Guangdong

We drove along the road in the peaks and reached the pier of Yuxi Sandong from Lingxiao Rock in more than ten minutes. The two places are 5 kilometers apart. Here is another small tributary in the upper reaches of Moyang River - Ganlu River. It penetrates three stone mountains to form a cave channel with a total length of 3 kilometers and can be browsed by boat.

There is a small village next to the cave. After talking to the villagers, I learned that the village is called "Shancao Village". Before the road was built, the river next to the village was the access channel for villagers. Every household had a boat, and you could go to Yunfu by rowing. There are many paddy fields among the several caves that the river runs through, and there are some dry lands in the nearby valleys. There are fish in the river, including carp and dace, ranging from one to more than ten kilograms. You can set nets and fish. There are not many people in the village. In the past, few outsiders came. Later, more people came to Lingxiao Rock, and gradually tourists came here. There is also a small road leading to Lingxiao Rock, which is less than one kilometer away.

Cave Village! A good name is like Yandi River, simple and straightforward. A few words can describe all the characteristics of the terrain. I like this name! The cave used to be called Sandongtian, and Yuxi Three Cave was named after tourism development. A dam about three to four meters high was built at the dock where the ship was boarded, and the entrance of the cave could be seen from the dam. Water is stored on the dam, making the river at the entrance of the cave very abundant. There are two holes upstream of the dam and a third hole downstream. After the dam was built, although the river was open, the waterway was blocked, so the third hole could only be reached on foot.

The second cave the boat entered has a wide and straight river channel, a smooth cave roof, and scattered stalactites hanging down. The Ganlu River passed through three mountains again and again, opening a large channel with a total length of 350 meters, a width of about 30 meters, and a height of about 50 meters, which is even better than modern tunnels. Because the cave entrance is wide and there is no shelter, the cave can completely rely on the natural light from the cave entrance to illuminate the passage and view. The landscape stones in the cave change scenery with each step, which is charming and naive, giving people unlimited imagination and fun.

On the cave walls of the river channel, there are sedimentary layers of ancient river channels. The strata in Yangchun have undergone three movements, causing the river to undergo three subsidences. After each subsidence, the sediments from the previous river channel were left at the location of the ancient river channel. Such ancient river relics are also found in Lingxiao Rock, but everyone's attention there was attracted by the beautiful stalactites.

The three-story hall of Lingxiao Rock is also the site of ancient river channels from three geological ages. By chance, the two layers of river channels above Lingxiao Rock collapsed due to the entrance of the cave, creating a closed environment in the cave, forming a space suitable for the development of stalactites. Open spaces like Yuxi Cave 1 and Cave 2 have constant river water, fast air flow, and fast volatilization of rock interstitial water. There are no sedimentation conditions, so stalactite wonders like Lingxiao Rock cannot be developed. However, God gave the third cave of Yuxi a perfect combination: both the wide river channel in the lower layer and the twists and turns of the stalactite cave in the upper layer. This is really nature’s love for Yangchun!

Entering the cave, exiting the cave, and entering the cave again, the boat passed one mountain after another. It was relaxed and comfortable, and there was no hard work of climbing over the mountains on land. The valley between the mountains is a pastoral countryside with whirling bamboo forests, thick water bamboos and slender red bamboos.

The empty rivers are like silent corridors, and the slow river water takes us to an isolated "paradise".

Written by: Qin Nina Photography: Jin Xiang, etc.

Editor: Yang Yalin Picture Editor: Zhou Honglei Review: Liao Muhong