Yangyang Cave in Yunyang

Yangyang Cave in Yunyang

Yangyang Cave is located on a mountain at an altitude of 700 meters between the Yangtze River and Modao Stream in Shuangba Village, Baoping Town, Yunyang District, Chongqing. To the east, it overlooks the sea of clouds over Wushan Mountain; to the south, it gazes over the myriad peaks and valleys of Hunan and Chongqing; to the west, it connects to the Chengdu-Chongqing-Wanzhou Highway; and to the north, it faces the Yangtze River, linking all directions. The cave has an interior height of 15 meters and covers an area of 210 square meters.

As early as the Ming and Qing dynasties, Yangyang Cave had become a sacred site for Taoism. A folk rhyme in eastern Chongqing goes: “If you want to find immortals, go to Yangyang Cave.” By the end of the Republican era, it was renovated by the Taoist priest Zuo Youmei. As a Taoist site, the area within 1,000 meters around the cave is under the management of the temple, encompassing over 100 acres of land with ancient trees providing dense shade, including cypresses, yellow nanmu trees, and red sourwood trees with trunks too thick for three people to hug—numbering over ten thousand. A bluestone path 300 meters long and 3 meters wide leads directly to a 5-meter-wide terrace outside the cave. From the terrace, 20 steps upward lead to a 30-meter-long, 3-meter-high stone wall. Between the wall and the cave entrance lies a courtyard about 600 square meters in size. On the east and west sides of the courtyard are small compounds, each featuring two-story, fully wooden ancient Chinese architecture. Doors, windows, railings, and paneling are often carved with floral, bird, dragon, and beast motifs. The complex includes pavilions, terraces, towers, and ponds, and is especially famed for its “twisting dragon pillar,” often praised as “the soaring crane of Zhangfei Temple, the soaring dragon of Yangyang Cave”—a masterpiece of craftsmanship.

The cave entrance is an open-style “lion’s wide-open mouth,” standing 20 meters high, 30 meters wide, and extending 20 meters deep. The cave ceiling is naturally smooth and well-lit. The lower 3 meters of the outer cave wall are built with strip stones, the next 3 meters up to 6 meters are made of earthen bricks, and from 6 meters up to the cave ceiling are wooden carved railings. On the front wall above the cave gate is an inscription: “Within the cave there are caves, within the caves you see caves, caves are but caves; divine light spans the heavens, beyond the heavens there are more heavens, beyond those, even more.”

Above the cave eaves are stone inscriptions as large as bowls, carved in the 1940s by Liu Menghang, former director of the Sichuan Provincial Historical Literature Museum: “Benevolence is the nature, stillness and motion are the rites, drink this spring water at Meiyang Rock.” On the right stone cliff, there is another carving by Liang Chengzhi, one of the three great literati of Yunyang in the 1940s: “Gazing at brocade clouds on the sheer cliffs, sitting alone with the moon over the stone pool.”

On the walls to the left and right of the main gate are carved lions, each depicted in a fierce downward-roaring posture. The left wall features a distant view of Zhangfei Temple, while the right wall shows a distant view of Yangyang Cave. On the left side of the flat ground is a goldfish pond, above which hangs a 30-meter-long rope from which spring water flows down into an original stone vat with a diameter of 1.5 meters and a depth of 1 meter. Overflow from the vat fills the goldfish pond, which measures 8 meters long, 6 meters wide, and 3 meters deep. The sky, sun, clouds, mountains, trees, cave, spring, pavilion, people, and fish blend together in the pond water, harmonizing with the earth and sky—a scene truly unparalleled in the world. Inside the cave, 18 arhats are sculpted, each with unique expressions. The incense never ceases, and visitors linger, reluctant to leave. During the Anti-Japanese War, this place served as an outpost for air defense alerts in Chongqing.

Address: Shuangba Village, Baoping Town, Yunyang District, Chongqing