Dayou Cave

Dayou Cave

Dayou Cave is a limestone karst cave. The cave is thirty to forty meters high, twenty to thirty meters wide, and over a hundred meters long. A stream flows through it with a murmuring sound, never drying up in autumn or winter, exiting along the right side of the cave and flowing into the Youyang River. Traveling upstream into the cave, steep cliffs line both sides. After about half a li, the space suddenly opens up into a completely different world. Within it lie over ten acres of fields, surrounded by mountains on all sides, all sheer cliffs, giving the impression of being cut off from the rest of the world. Therefore, the Qing Dynasty’s *Youyang Prefecture Records* described this cave as being “exactly like Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring.” The Qing Dynasty’s *Sichuan General Gazetteer* also stated: “Youyang was under the jurisdiction of Qianling in Wuling Commandery during the Han Dynasty. Who’s to say the ferry crossing sought by the fisherman wasn’t right here? However, after the Yongjia era of the Jin Dynasty, the area came under the control of ethnic minorities; from the Song to the Ming Dynasties, it remained the domain of native chieftains. Renowned scholars rarely visited, so there are no historical records to confirm its identity as the Peach Blossom Spring.”

The top of Dayou Cave is domed while the floor is flat, making it warm in winter and cool in summer. From the cave ceiling hang stalactites, arranged in an orderly fashion, with water droplets falling like pearls, producing a tinkling sound. The stalactites take on various shapes—some resembling humans or objects, others birds or beasts. Visitors are free to name them based on their imagination. The stone walls on both sides feature many seal script inscriptions and poems, but due to the passage of time, most have been eroded and are now illegible. Only on the left wall at the back of the cave can one still clearly see four large regular-script characters, “Ancient Hidden Books,” handwritten by Luo Shengwu, the magistrate of Youyang during the Qing Dynasty. Regarding the hidden books, the Qing Dynasty’s *Youyang Prefecture Records* includes a poem that says when Emperor Qin Shi Huang burned books and buried Confucian scholars alive, scholars from Xianyang fled into the Wuling mountainous region carrying books and hid all the volumes they carried in this cave.

Before 1936, when the Sichuan-Hunan Highway had not yet been built, the official road passed about half a li from the cave entrance, crossing a stone bridge over the small stream that flows out of the cave. There were many peach trees along the stream, and in spring, when the peach blossoms bloomed and petals drifted colorfully down the stream, the water flowed red with petals. An anonymous Ming Dynasty poet inscribed a quatrain on the cave wall: “The stream before the cave flows vast and wide, / The peach blossoms within gradually fade. / Han Zhongjun doesn’t come, the fisherman departs, / While the Taoist idly leans on the stone railing.” In the Ming Dynasty, Yan Tianyu, the Youyang Pacification Commissioner, also wrote a poem about the “Eight Scenic Spots” of Dayou Cave, which included: “Amid rugged peaks lies a secluded cave heaven, / Where visitors gather for joyful excursions. / Pine winds whisper from the skies above, shrouded in light mist, / While peach petals drift gently by the cave’s flowing waters...” Both describe the scenic beauty of the “Red Peach Blossoms Floating in the Stream.” The current Youyang County government is working on developing the Dayou Cave scenic area, restoring its former appearance according to the records in the *Prefecture Records*, and equipping it with modern tourism facilities to meet visitor needs, providing a place for people to enjoy and explore.