The Changyu Stone Quarry Site

The Changyu Stone Quarry Site

The Changyu Stone Quarry Site is a Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Heritage Site.

The Changyu Stone Quarry Site is located in Xinhe Town, Wenling City. With a long history, it is a provincial-level cultural heritage site. Its mining history can be traced back to approximately the Northern and Southern Dynasties period, over 1,500 years ago. Initially, Changyu stone was used on a small scale with limited operations. After the Song Dynasty, large-scale production gradually began, developing into a local industry. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the scale continued to expand, featuring specialized "stone craftsmen" and mines employing dozens of workers. Changyu stone was sold to other regions, becoming one of the area’s pillar industries.

Since the Republican era, especially during the 50 years following 1949, quarrying activities experienced rapid development, reaching their peak in Changyu’s mining history. In the late 1980s, the market for stone slabs shrank. Thereafter, quarrying gradually ceased, leaving behind a series of artificially excavated natural cave structures.

Some of the steep cliffs and rock caves left after quarrying caught the attention of Buddhist and Taoist practitioners. They built temples here, creating what came to be known as a “cave-heaven buddhaland” and “fairy grottoes,” which have since become popular sites for both sightseeing and worship.

According to records, the Changyu Stone Quarry Site consists of more than a thousand caves and numerous terraced pits and vertical shafts, including 28 cave clusters and 1,314 individual caves, with a total volume of 6 million cubic meters. These cave clusters generally stand 40 meters high and range from 30 to 50 meters in width, with the tallest reaching up to 177 meters, and they vary in shape. The quarrying methods for Changyu stone slabs included open-pit, semi-open-pit, and underground techniques, with the majority of the Changyu quarries being semi-open-pit bell-shaped pits. The main product quarried in Changyu was stone slabs made of breccia tuff, which were large in size, with some measuring up to four or five square meters or even larger. The stone extracted in Changyu was primarily used for constructing city walls, bridges, seawalls, sluice gates, roads, residential buildings, temples, and daily-use items.

Further Reading:

· Sixth Batch of Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Heritage Sites