Current mood:	disappointed
Entry tags:	caves, china, environment, hangzhou, limestone

Exploring Limestone Caves in Hangzhou
Today Zhang Fengping and I visited some caves in one of the many limestone mountains near Zhoupu. These were much bigger than any other caves I've visited in my life, with hundred-foot high ceilings and stalagmites bigger than Greyhound buses. Zhang Fengping and I were the only cave visitors, since everyone is at home today celebrating the holiday.

I was disappointed at the amount of destruction to the cave environment caused by opening it to visitors. The floors were paved over, the water artificially channeled and muddied, noisy polluting generators installed inside, and many cave formations badly damaged. The natural splendor of the cave was ruined by fake concrete stalactites and other artificial structures, electric fountains, and carnival-style games. Most caves here in Hangzhou are always full of bats, and you'd expect a cave so big to have millions of them, but I only saw a couple bats the whole time I was inside.

There wasn't a single bit of information available on the natural history or biology of the caves, or on cave conservation. There were no guides, and the only employees there just harassed us constantly trying to sell us photos or souvenirs. If they want to attract more visitors to the caves they should educate people about them and present the natural features of the caves, not man-made gimmicks. Otherwise Chinese people just see a bunch of weird-shaped rocks and don't realize that they took millions of years to form.

Also, they really should have guides to go with people to prevent them from damaging the delicate cave environment and disturbing cave animals. The graffiti carved all over the stalagmites and other formations will probably take thousands of years to heal, and the trash people throw can easily float to far reaches of the cave where it may remain for thousands of years or more.

The city of Hangzhou claims to care about environmental protection, but I say they fail miserably. They really only care about getting the most tourist revenue possible. They are definitely successful in attracting tens of millions of Chinese tourists every year, but maybe if they did a better job of protecting the environment here they could also attract more higher-paying foreign tourists in the future.

Really I should be glad these caves still exist at all. Other large limestone mountains all around the Zhoupu area and all over Zhejiang province have been blasted away completely and fed to cement plants. I guess it's better to have a half-destroyed cave than to lose the entire mountain and have no cave at all.

China has enormous quantities of limestone, and new caves are being discovered here all the time. Let's hope effort is made to protect some of these newly discovered caves before irreversible damage is done. That way cave formations and cave critters will be protected and future generations can enjoy the caves in the natural state.