Tenglong Cave
Tenglong Cave
Before you even see the cave you can hear it roaring. That’s the Tenglong Flying DragonCave located on the upper reaches of the Qingjiang River on the outskirts of Lichuan City in Hubei Province. It first brings people a strong acoustic thrill. When l was two or three kilometers away from it I could already hear a loud insistent noise. At the entrance of the Tenglong Cave the”400kilometer winding Qingjiang River” suddenly drops thus forming a waterfall some 50 meters wide and 30 meters high. Devoured by the “huge mouth” of the Tenglong Cave the river meanders inside the cave for 16.8 kilometers. With a huge flow.
Of the some 400 show caves in China the Tenglong Cave is amongst the largest. with a total length of 52. 8 kilometers second in length only to the Shuanghe Cave in Suiyang. Its entrance is 74 meters high and 64 meters wide. Inside it reaches as high as 235 meters with a total area of more than two million square meters. giving an average per capita living space of three square meters if Lichuan’s 800000 population decided to move in. The cave consists of five hills. 1 0 Chambers and a dozen waterfalls.
The cave is entered at one point by a huge river. This river first drops an almost 10m high waterfall right before it enters the cave. Here a path was built about 20m above the water along the cave wall entering the river cave. The concrete path has a good view down to the cave river. The water deepens and calms down while it is narrowed by the cave walls. However this path goes into the cave only for a short distance the path is always lighted from outside. At the first narrow point of the underground gorge a concrete bridge crosses the river goes back out of the cave on the opposite side and leaves the cave again.
The path continues along the limestone cliff outside and reaches a second fossil aka dry entrance to the cave. The portal is almost rectangular 50m wide and 60m high. The floor was leveled and grassed probably as part of the development works. It seems the water once entered the cave here. There is a small office and picnic tables.
The cave itself is an enormous passage only slightly smaller than the entrance. The cave is toured on electric open top vehicles which travel on a concrete path at speeds of some 50km/h. Despite the comfortable temperature of the cave we recommend a sweater for this ride. After 2.2km a sort of theatre is reached where the visitors sit on wooden benches. The huge passage is filled with artificial fog which is used for a laser show.
On the way back a second stage is passed. On this stage once a day at 15:30 a special show is performed. Dancers perform a sort of Chinese opera the story is displayed for foreign visitors on electronic signboards beside the stage. The perfomance includes light show music multimedia projections water jets and gas flames.
This cave is very young show cave developed during the last years. Free True Group from Hong Kong and two firms from China were investing 150 million yuan US18 million to develop the cave.
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