Yangyang Cave in Yunyang

　　   Yangyang Cave is situated on a mountain at an altitude of 700 meters between the Yangtze River and Modao Stream in Shuangba Village, Baoping Town, Yunyang County, Chongqing. To the east, it faces the sea of clouds over Wushan; to the south, it overlooks the mountains and valleys of Hunan and Chongqing; to the west, it connects to the Chengdu-Chongqing-Wanzhou Highway; and to the north, it borders 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 from 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 of the cave is under the management of the temple, encompassing over 100 acres of land. Towering ancient trees provide ample shade, including cypresses, yellow nanmu trees, and red azalea trees with trunks too thick for three people to hug—numbering in the tens of thousands. A bluestone path 300 meters long and 3 meters wide leads to a 5-meter-wide terrace outside the cave. Twenty steps up from the terrace stands 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 traditional Chinese two-story wooden structures. Their doors, windows, railings, and paneling are often intricately carved with flowers, birds, dragons, and beasts. The courtyards include pavilions, towers, terraces, and ponds. Among them, the coiled dragon pillar known as “the soaring dragon of Yangyang Cave, rivaling the white cranes of Zhangfei Temple,” is a marvel 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 three meters of the outer cave wall are built with strip stones, the next three meters with earthen bricks, and from six meters up to the ceiling with carved wooden railings. The front wall of the cave features a couplet: “Within the cave there are caves, within the caves you see caves, caves are caves; divine... spans the heavens, beyond the heavens there are more heavens.”

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

　　   On the walls on either side of the main gate are carved lions, each depicted in a fierce downward-roaring pose. The left wall features a distant view of Zhangfei Temple, while the right wall shows a distant view of Yangyang Cave. To the left 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. The overflow fills the goldfish pond, which is 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, creating a harmonious scene that is truly one of a kind. Inside the cave, 18 arhats are sculpted, each with unique expressions. The incense never stops burning, and visitors linger, reluctant to leave. During the Anti-Japanese War, this place served as an early warning outpost for air defense in Chongqing.

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