Hubei · Where a River Goes Underground
Tenglong Cave (腾龙洞)
The Qingjiang river meets a wall of limestone in western Hubei and disappears into it. Next door, the passage the river used at a higher level is dry, and you can walk into it.
Quick Facts
The Short Version
| What it is | A very large limestone cave system in two parts: a water cave that the river runs into, and a dry cave alongside it that you walk through |
|---|---|
| Where | Lichuan, in Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, western Hubei |
| The mouth | Given by the scenic area as 74 metres high and 64 metres wide. The floor inside it is grass, and large enough to fly a balloon from |
| Inside | Published figures put the surveyed system at 59.8 km with more than 300 side passages on five levels, and the roof 235 metres above the floor at one point |
| The river | The Qingjiang enters the ground here and runs underground before re-emerging downstream |
| Outside the cave | A slot gorge below the entrance with stepped paths along both walls and the river running white through it |
| Inside the dry cave | Concrete and stone walkways under amber floodlighting, with a laser show and a stage production in the main chamber |
| Time needed | Half a day for the cave and the gorge together |
Why Go
A Hole the Size of the River That Made It
1. The river ends, and then starts again
Limestone country does this. Water finds a weakness, dissolves its way down through the rock and takes the whole river with it, leaving a dry valley above and an underground channel below. What is unusual here is the size. The Qingjiang is a substantial river, and the opening it has worked for itself over a very long period is correspondingly large.
The two caves are the same story at two dates. The water cave is where the river goes now. The dry cave beside it, the one visitors walk into, is passage the river used when the valley floor stood higher, abandoned as the whole system cut downward. The five levels the scenic area describes are five stages of that process, stacked. Walking the dry cave is walking a riverbed that was left behind.
2. What has been done with the space
The mouth is given as 74 metres by 64, and the grass floor inside it is mown lawn with a hot air balloon tethered on it in the footage. Further in, the chambers are floodlit in amber and gold, with walkways running along the walls, and the main hall carries a laser show and a stage production with dancers in Tujia costume.
None of that is subtle, and a visitor who wants a cave to feel like a cave should know it is coming. The compensation is that the space is large enough to absorb it. A chamber that can hold a theatre and still read as a void is doing something that photographs struggle with, and it is the reason to come.
The catch. The lighting is coloured, the shows are aimed squarely at domestic visitors, and most of the walking is on concrete under floodlights rather than anything resembling caving. The gorge outside the entrance, with the river running through a slot and steps cut along both walls, is arguably the better hour. Lichuan is also a long way from anywhere: this is a stop inside a western Hubei trip, not a day out from a city.
Orientation
Getting There, and the Order to Do It In
Lichuan sits on the railway between Chongqing and Yichang, which is the practical way in, and Enshi about 60 km east has the nearest airport. The site is a short drive from Lichuan town. Coming from Chongqing is easier than coming from Wuhan, which is most of a day away.
Do the gorge first and the cave second. The gorge involves steps and gets slippery, and it is better done with energy and daylight; the cave is level walking and is lit the same at any hour. If the shows matter to you, check the times on arrival, because they set the shape of the visit.
Practical
Things Worth Knowing
Take a layer
Caves this size hold a steady cool temperature regardless of the season outside, and you will be in there for over an hour.
Shoes with grip
The gorge steps are wet almost all the time and the cave floor has damp patches under the lights.
Go after rain for the gorge, not for the cave
High water makes the slot section genuinely impressive. It makes no difference at all to what you see inside.
Do not photograph the dark
A phone will not hold the far wall of a chamber this size. Put something or somebody in the frame or accept that the pictures will not carry it.
Timing
When to Go
| Season | The case for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| April to June | Full river, green valley and comfortable walking outside | Wet. Enshi is one of the rainier parts of Hubei |
| September to November | Clear air, steady water and the most pleasant conditions above ground | The first week of October is the national holiday |
| July to August | The cave is cool, which is exactly why local visitors come | Heat and humidity outside, and the domestic season at its busiest |
| December to March | Very quiet, and the cave is unaffected by the weather | Cold and grey outside, low water in the gorge, and some services reduced |
Context
Karst, the Qingjiang, and the Prefecture Around It
Western Hubei is limestone country on a large scale, part of the same belt that runs south into Guizhou and west into Chongqing. Rain here is heavy and slightly acidic, limestone is soluble, and the result over millions of years is a landscape with as much structure below ground as above it: sinkholes, dry valleys, underground rivers and caves at every size from a crack to this.
The Qingjiang runs the length of that country before joining the Yangtze downstream of Yichang. It spends part of its course underground, part in gorges, and part, since the dams, as a chain of long green reservoirs. A river that does all three things in a few hundred kilometres is a good short course in what limestone does to drainage.
The prefecture is Tujia and Miao autonomous, and Lichuan is a Tujia area. The stage production inside the cave draws on that, as tourist performances do. The more useful place to encounter it is outside: in the villages, the stilted timber houses and the food, which is sour, smoked and quite unlike the Hubei cooking of the Yangtze plain.
Nearby
Other Stops on the Same Trip
Spot · 215 km east
Qingjiang Gorge (清江画廊)
The same river, much further down and held behind a dam. Here it vanishes into rock; there it is sixty kilometres of green reservoir gorge you cross by boat.
Spot · 150 km northeast
Shennong Stream (神农溪)
A tributary running down to the Yangtze through the Three Gorges, done in small boats.
Spot · 230 km east
Three Gorges Waterfall (三峡大瀑布)
Limestone and falling water again, on the way back toward Yichang.
Where to Base
Enshi (恩施)
Enshi is the prefecture seat, has the nearest airport and is the base most visitors use. The Enshi Grand Canyon, about an hour and a half away on the other side of the city, is the other headline site in the prefecture and pairs naturally with this one over two days.
Staying in Lichuan instead puts you next to the cave and next to the high summer pastures above the town, which are what people from Chongqing come up here for in July. Either way, treat western Hubei as a three or four day region rather than a stop.
Experiences
What You Can Actually Do Here
On site · 3 hr
Gorge then cave
The stepped paths beside the water first, then the dry cave and the main chamber.
Nearby · full day
The prefecture’s other canyon
The Enshi Grand Canyon, which is cliff walkway and limestone pinnacles rather than caves, and the obvious second day.
Guided · 4 days
Western Hubei by road
Chongqing in, the cave and the canyon, the Qingjiang by boat, out at Yichang for the Yangtze. A driver makes this work; public transport does not.
Worth half a day inside a western Hubei trip, and not worth a journey of its own. Walk the gorge before the cave, put a person in every photograph you take underground, and keep hold of the one fact that makes the place more than a big hole: the river you watched running white through the gorge outside goes into the ground here and does not come back up for a long way.
Put Western Hubei Together
Tell us your dates and which end you are coming from, and our local team will build the loop: the cave and the gorge, the Enshi canyon, the Qingjiang by boat, and a driver who knows the mountain roads between them.