Southwest Guizhou 2: Zhijin cavern

cctv.com 05-12-2004 14:57

Guizhou is an ideal place to see the Karst topography. And Zhijin cave is one of the most famous cave in Guizhou. there are many wonders and unsolved puzzles inside, let's check it out.

The Zhijin cavern actually stretches more than ten kilometers underground. And not all of it is open to the visitors. It boasts some 47 halls with a total capacity of 5 million cubic meters. Usually it takes two hours to cover the whole distance. Because they have more than 40 kinds of karst formations in here, people call the Zhijin caves a Karst museum.

Who could imagine these formations were accumulated, particle by particle, by calcium carbonate in the drops of water. Some of the accumulation goes seventy meters high. The earliest deposition took place hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Some of the formations look remarkably like sculptures of objects from our everyday world: a super huge helmet, a upside down boot, or a mushroom with a mysterious luster. Some of the shapes seem to have escaped gravity. They appear to dance in the air, to form eccentric opulent shapes.

It's hard to imagine there is such a spacious caves underground. And it's formed by drops of water. And somehow it was recorded. It's like for a moment, a waterfall was frozen in time, but that moment could be as long as tens of thousands of years.

Editor:Zhang  Source:CCTV.com