Yi Family Cave

Yi Family Cave Yi Family Cave is located in Xinlongchang Town, Xingren County, about 8 kilometers from the county seat. It is a natural karst cave, stretching over 800 meters in length with more than 10 side chambers. The entrance faces north and the exit west. Its main features are its height, width, uniqueness, and wonder. From several hundred meters outside the cave, one can already see its broad, arched entrance shaped like a grand gateway. Rows of nearly perfect conical mosses and jagged stalactites hang in an arc high above the “cave gate,” resembling the lace edge of an artificially crafted curtain. Upon entering the cave, you’ll find a spacious and bright “hall” about 30 meters high and three to four rooms wide. Halfway up the left wall of the hall rises a semi-circular terrace that gradually climbs higher and extends forward along the wall, like a celestial ladder. Passing through the “hall” at the cave entrance and navigating around a pair of half-person-tall “silver pagodas” and several reclining “thousand-year-old turtles,” you’ll enter the “Fairy Terraced Fields.” Layer upon layer of “terraced fields,” each brimming with clear water, stretch endlessly, with “little elephants with long trunks” playing in the water and “frogs” chirping and leaping about. Adjacent to the left of the “Fairy Terraced Fields” is an ear chamber that leads to the Peach Blossom Hot Cave. Squeezing through the narrow entrance, you’ll find yourself in a vast “Shangri-La,” where the heat is intense and grows stronger the further you go, as if entering a warming chamber. Retreating back to the main cave and moving forward, what comes into view are groups of “ferocious beasts”—a “majestic eagle” standing alone atop a cliff, a “mighty lion” exuding power, a “vicious wolf” hanging upside down as if dying, a “cobra” flicking its tongue and raising its head, and even “dinosaurs” long extinct. In the middle section of the cave is the “Dragon Palace,” much higher than the entrance “hall.” The walls are grayish-white, evenly adorned with cotton-like patterns. A stalactite “pillar reaching to the heavens” rises from the ground and stretches all the way to the top. Inside the palace, stalactite-formed gates, walls, and curtains are strikingly lifelike and natural, with two “guards” standing outside the door. Before the “Dragon Palace,” on a “fairy mountain” covered with stone stalagmites and pillars, numerous “immortals” gather, dressed in “traditional Chinese robes,” their sleeves flowing gently as they appear serene and carefree. Additionally, there are the namable “Immortal Group” adjacent to the “square” in the rear section of the cave, a highly realistic “temple,” and a “lotus couple” embracing under a banana tree beside a stone lotus, both dressed in ethnic costumes. The rear section of the cave opens into a very flat “square.” An ancient, towering stalactite tree grows along the wall, reaching high into the “clouds.” On the left side of the square, a 10-meter-wide stalactite “waterfall” seems to cascade from the sky, with faint rumbling sounds of water echoing softly. The final scene of Yi Family Cave is the “Jade Pond” (a sacred spot where one can wash away worldly worries). The “Jade Pond” covers an area of about 100 square meters. Its waters are crystal-clear and still as a mirror, reflecting a cool, silvery sheen. Standing before the pond, one’s heart becomes as serene and pure as the water, leaving behind all the troubles and sorrows of the world.