Reed Flute Cave
Interesting facts
- The oldest of the cave's ink inscriptions is dated 792, and about 77 of them survive, many still legible after more than a thousand years.
- Geologists describe the cave as the bed of an ancient underground lake some 700,000 years ago.
- The cave is about 240 metres long and up to 93 metres wide and 18 metres high, with a visitor route of roughly 500 metres.
- After centuries of obscurity it was found again in the 20th century; by some accounts refugees fleeing Japanese troops sheltered there in the 1940s.
- In January 1986 Deng Xiaoping toured the cave and added his own brush inscription, with his companion Wang Zhen signing beneath it.
- Its formations carry poetic names such as the Crystal Palace, the Dragon Pagoda and Flower-Fruit Mountain, the Monkey King's legendary home.
- A still underground lake inside the cave mirrors the lit formations above it.
- The cave has earned the nickname 'Palace of Natural Arts' for the density of its stalactites and stalagmites.
Why it is worth it
Reed Flute Cave has drawn visitors for far longer than "tourism" existed as a concept. Scholars and travelers left more than 70 ink inscriptions on its walls starting in the Tang dynasty, praising the cave in verse, with more layered on through the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties โ turning the walls into a legible, dated record of well over a thousand years of people reacting to the same rock formations visitors react to today.
The formations have their own folklore on top of that. One tall stalactite is identified by local legend as the magic staff of the Dragon King, later taken and turned into a weapon by Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of Journey to the West โ a detail that turns a geology stop into a scene from one of China's most famous stories.
The cave's name is more literal than either of those: reeds that once grew thickly around its mouth were cut and made into flutes, giving the site its name centuries before anyone added the colored lighting that fills the chambers today โ a modern touch that has nothing to do with the cave's original draw, which was always the inscriptions and the shapes carved by water in the rock.
Good to know
- More than 70 inscriptions on the walls date from the Tang dynasty (618โ907) through the Ming dynasty, a rare inscribed record spanning over a thousand years of visitors.
- The cave sits about 5 km northwest of central Guilin and has been developed for public tours since 1962.
- The colored lighting inside is a modern addition, unrelated to the reeds the cave was named for.
Getting there
3 km from Guilin. Guilin Liangjiang International Airport (KWL) is about 26 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Reed Flute Cave, also known as "the Palace of Natural Arts," is a landmark and tourist attraction in Guilin, Guangxi, China.
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