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Limestone Attractions
In the Permian Age 270 million years ago much of modern Yunnan was covered by the sea. With major shifts in the earth's crust the sea receded while its limestone bed rose up and broke through to make a new tableland. As the seawater seeped away it nibbled at this limestone, while acidic rain pounded it from above. Most of the limestone eroded, leaving weirdly shaped pillars behind. Lunan County's Stone Forest (Shilin) is an 80-hectare concentration of these pillars, but the phenomenon exists over much of the county. Little "stone groves" are often the backdrop to Sani villages and pop up on hillocks all along the main connecting roads.
Limestone is also a primary component of many of the small hills in the plains of Honghe and Wenshan Prefectures. At Babao in eastern Wenshan such hills are clustered close together over several square kilometres. A small river winds its way among them and Zhuang villages lie at their bases, their farms filling the flat land between them. At Qiubei in northwest Wenshan the cluster of hills is perhaps even more dramatic. Boats ply the river at Puzhehei and a cruise here compares well with the better known Li River trip out of Guilin.
Swallow Cave,Jianshui
The hills of such landscapes rarely rise more than a few hundred metres from the plain. In other parts of the area limestone hills seldom merit attraction for their shapes or eroded slopes. But many contain karst caves where the water has gradually seeped through the rock and, dripping from the cave's ceiling, left deposits in the form of strange stalactites. Rock walls with fluted sides, stalagmites resembling mushrooms or lions, caves within caves, slender, icicle-like petrifactions and subterranean streams are all illuminated by banks of coloured lights that augment the mysterious spectacles of the earth's womb.
Quite a number of these splendid karst caves lie in groups near Kunming at Jiuxiang, Yiliang County, and near the Stone Forest in Lunan County. Bigger grottoes, each with its own unique feature, are further on. Besides having two capacious caverns full of stalactites dripping from the ceilings and stalagmites studding the floors, Qujing's Heaven-made Grotto (Tianshengdong) has a small, upper-level chamber called the Musical Cave because the stalactites, when gently struck, make musical sounds.
In northern Honghe, Luxi's Ancient Alu Caves(Alu Gudong) are named after an indigenous peo- ple a thousand years ago who inhabited the cave group. Perhaps it was the Alu imagination that supplied the names for the natural sculptures, identified as flying dragons playing in the waterfall, elephants racing, crocodiles leaping and Axi girls dancing. Unique to this cave group is a species of transparent fish, which swims in the limpid, 800 metre-long, underground Yusun Stream. Visitors ride boats to view the stone patterns of the ceiling reflected in the water and interesting little stalagmites jutting up to pierce the surface.
The biggest cavern in the province, several kilo-metres long and up to 33 metres high inside, is Swallow Grotto (Yanzidong), 40 km east of Jianshui. Besides the usual marvellous pillars, stone curtains, petrified animals, etc, what gives the cave its fame is its use by myriad swifts to make their nests. These nests, made simply with the bird's saliva, are edible, the primary ingredient of bird's nest soup. Annually the local people gather and market them.
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