Xuankong Village

Xuankong Village

Located in the depths of Guancen mountain in the northwest of Shanxi Province, there are three ancient and magical suspended villages: wanghuagou village, Wuhuashan village and caojialiang village. All of them belong to censhan township of Ningwu county. The three villages are very close to each other. They are built between cliffs and cliffs. From a distance, they look like pavilions in the sky and people in the sky.

The houses in the village are built on the cliffs with a height of 100 meters, and the streets are "plank roads" supported by standing trees and paved with logs. In this ancient village, stone paths and simple dwellings can be seen everywhere. The villagers live a leisurely farming life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset. The village is old and quiet, but it is famous far and near.

survey

The houses in the village are built on the cliff. Looking up from the bottom of the cliff, they look like castles in the air. To enter the village, you have to walk slowly along a steep mountain road. Most of the houses have a history of two or three hundred years. Most of the building materials are mainly stone and wood. People walking on the plank road feel like they are in the air. The way of life here is still relatively traditional. The main means of transportation are big animals. The necessities of life in the village are all transported by mules and horses. Naked oatmeal, bean noodles and potatoes are the main food of the villagers. The mountain spring in the village flows continuously, which is the water source for the daily life of the whole village. What's amazing is that most of these people in the mountains have small attics. The attics are against the cliff and face the abyss. Visitors can see the vast expanse of green by the window and the sea of clouds by the door. Moreover, because the houses are built on flat ground, the streets are all supported by wooden columns on the cliff, and then paved with wooden boards. Visitors walking in this kind of street, which is very similar to the ancient plank road, feel the thrill of hanging in the air, which can be compared with acrobats walking on the tightrope.

A bird's-eye view from the hanging Street shows a cliff at the foot. There is gurgling water at the bottom of the stream, and its sound is like the sound of nature. On the other side is the shade of the mountain, with dense pine forest, blocking out the sun and the sky, which is the true portrayal of "Yin and Yang cutting the dawn" in Du Fu's poems. It's evening when I miss watching. There are many pine trees here, with curly branches and different shapes. The setting sun is slanting and the birds are returning. For those who have lived in the bustling city for a long time, when they are in this situation, they can clear their mind, think, and even be spirited. They feel like they are becoming immortals. It's not only beautiful, but also simple. Since the reform and opening up, more young people have gone out to work. Those who stay in the village are all old people. Talking with them, they are simple, honest, honest and true, which are quite different from modern city people. They do not want to leave this "suspended" village, saying that they are used to living here.

The mountain of ice and fire

Wannian ice cave

village

The nearby Wannian ice cave is located in a huge Huiyan funnel. As the saying goes, "no mountain is empty, there must be a cave in the mountain", but most of them are stone caves. You must have experienced them several times. But when you visit the ice cave, I think you'd better go to the sedan chair for the first time! The creator of nature has built a crystal palace for himself here. Even in the hot summer, entering the cave is still a cold, ice carved and jade winter scene, which is quite different from the scorching sun, green trees and red flowers outside the cave. The Wannian ice cave is developed in the Ordovician limestone cave with an altitude of 2200 meters, with a dimension of 38 ° 50 '. It was formed in the Cenozoic Quaternary glacial period, with a history of 3 million years. So far, more than 20 ice caves have been found all over the world. In China, more than 10 ice caves have been found in Tanggula, Wulingyuan, Shennongjia, Taibai Mountain, Wushan mountain and Chengde, and even four large and small ice caves, including Wannian ice cave, have been found in Ningwu. Among the numerous ice caves, through years of investigation and argumentation, experts believe that it is "the largest ice cave found in China, and also a rare large ice cave found outside the polar ice sheet, the distribution range of modern glaciers and the permafrost layer in alpine regions in the world so far. Its underground cooling mechanism is different from other ice caves in areas north of 40 ° n (such as Heilongjiang Province of China and Siberia of Russia). It is the most special ice cave in China. Not only the atmospheric ice cave in high latitude can not be compared with it, but also the underground cooling ice cave in low latitude can not be compared with it. Its protective development occupies an important position in academic research and rich tourism products. ". Wannian ice cave is also an underground treasure house and a scientific underground palace: "the ice in the ice cave records the changes of the global environment in the past ten thousand years, and has immeasurable information precipitation and concentration records in the aspects of atmosphere, climate, hydrology, geology, geomorphology, biology, human living environment and protection.".

volcano

The existence of ice caves is an eternal mystery, which has broken the minds of many experts and scholars, and there is still no satisfactory answer. It is the only ice cave formed under the same climate and terrain in China, because it has no reason and possibility to exist in terms of dimension, altitude, geology and climate. In addition, the most incomprehensible point of the Wannian ice cave is: according to the general law, the temperature will rise by 0.4 ℃ every 100 meters deep into the bottom, while the Wannian ice cave goes the opposite way. The deeper it goes, the colder the temperature is and the thicker the ice layer is. This is a rare "negative geothermal phenomenon". Some experts believe that there is a huge underground glacier hidden deep in the ice cave, which objectively causes the cooling effect.

In 2001, in Shenchi County on the back of the ice cave, another back hole was found, which may play a role in the ventilation and heat dissipation of the ice cave. As the saying goes: it's not that the enemies don't get together, just one ice cave has already made people sigh "the world is big, there are all kinds of strange things". But who would have thought that nature has played a big joke with human beings: on the hillside 500 meters away from the ten thousand year old ice cave, another "Millennium volcano" -- a black hole that is not deep in winter and swallows smoke and fog. It's also a cave. To the north of the mountain, there are ice muscles, snow bones and chilling air. To the south of the mountain, there are thousands of years of hot air transpiration, smoke and fire. Since ancient times, water and fire are incompatible. This pair of enemies seem to be fighting against each other, but in fact they are "in the same room (mountain)" and "ice and fire are compatible". It's really a strange natural wonder and a mystery. Therefore, the local people gave the mountain an image name, called "contradiction mountain". In a word, Wannian ice cave, as the first of the five mysteries of Luya Mountain, is still mysterious. If you are interested, we may as well "different people have different opinions", and make our own notes for the eternal mystery. Maybe your inference is correct!

Landscape in ice cave

When you enter the ice cave in midsummer, you need to add more clothes. Only when you follow the guide into the ice cave, drill the ice path, hold the ice fence (pole), step on the ice ladder, cross the ice stack, and walk on the ice body, can you get to each layer of the ice cave for a panoramic view.

This is the first layer of the ice cave. The shape of ice on the surface of the cave top and wall is like snow hanging silver. In the middle of the cave, there is a square mouth at the top. A stream of water seeps out of the cave and drops down. When it is cold, it becomes ice. After years of dripping and freezing, it forms a huge icicle standing up and down. The icicle is 6 meters high and 5 meters long, which is very spectacular. There is a winding ice channel on the low ice body of the cave, which is unfathomable.

To the second floor of the ice cave. It can be called the world of ice, with strings of ice hanging on the cave wall and glittering; the top of the cave is covered with solid ice, and the ice milk is closely hanging; the icicles in the cave stand upright, and the icicles seem not even up and down. There is a pool in the middle of the cave, with thin ice on the top and a puddle at the bottom. Around the puddle, there are bamboo shoots of ice cones, ice cream and ice tips, which are crystal clear.

To the third floor of the ice cave, there is the most spectacular spectacle of the ice cave -- jade waterfall. The huge ice waterfall with a height of 30 meters, a width of 15 meters and a thickness of 3 meters falls down from the top of the hall. The icicles, ice curtains, ice hooks, ice bells, ice buds, ice flowers, ice flags, ice peaks, icemen, ice Buddhas, ice beasts, ice birds, ice shoots, ice beds, ice towers, ice milk, ice cones and ice tips formed on the waterfall and the surrounding cave walls....... There are various forms, crystal clear, different shapes, beautiful and graceful, which make people dizzying and have special charm. Its unique shape can be compared with that of stalactite in karst cave. This is a group of rare underground ice waterfalls in the world. The main waterfall "flies straight down into the cave, and it is suspected that the Milky way falls into the nine heavens"; the secondary waterfall flows with silver and jade, and is surrounded by layers. The whole waterfall group is ice, snow, bone, and spotless. It seems that the monkey king has used it to make people suspect that they have entered the Crystal Palace of the Dragon King of the East Sea and the cold fairyland of Chang'e fairy. There are two huge icicles, the top of the ice shed, the bottom of the ice, just like the gate of heaven. There is a hole in the cave and a hall behind it. From the ice hall through the narrow ice road, you can enter another suspended ice hall, which is like hanging on the second floor of the theater. It is a crystal world of ice and snow.

The ice layers on the top of the cave are of different colors and thicknesses, overlapping like sedimentary rocks. These ice layers are of great scientific research value, because they are frozen by layers of ice and snow for millions of years; they are the deposition of a large amount of information about the changes of atmosphere, climate, species and the birth and evolution of human beings for millions of years. All the secrets of the earth's past are hidden in them, and all these have never been modified because of human destruction. The oxygen isotope in the ice records the annual temperature of the earth; the dust layer in the ice shows the situation of prehistoric volcanic activity; the air bubbles in the ice reveal the composition of the atmosphere thousands of years ago; and the water in the ice itself provides the elements of the earth in nature at different times

Chinese PinYin : Xuan Kong Cun