Zhijin Cave

Zhijin Cave, in Guanzhai Township of Zhijin County, Bijie, northwestern Guizhou, is one of the largest karst caves in China and forms part of a UNESCO Global Geopark. The cave is notable for its scale: enormous halls, many with ceilings high enough to hold multi-storey buildings, and a very large number of formations that include stalagmite forests, stone pillars, curtains, flowstone and mineral deposits in a wide range of shapes. The visitor route follows a fixed walkway of several kilometres through the main chambers, with lighting that picks out named formations and colour effects added for atmosphere. Boardwalks and staircases connect the halls, and guides or recorded commentary identify the best-known features. The temperature inside stays steady at roughly 12 to 15 degrees Celsius all year, so a jacket is useful even in summer, and humidity is high, which makes floors damp in places. A full tour normally takes three to four hours, depending on pace and how long visitors stop for photographs. Photographers find that a tripod is hard to use in crowded sections, but the wide halls reward long exposures where permitted, and the larger chambers give the best chance of capturing the scale of the formations. Crowds are heaviest at weekends, in July and August, and during the Chinese national holiday in early October, when group tours run in tight succession. Weekday mornings are calmer. Zhijin town has restaurants and basic accommodation, and the cave is reached by bus from Bijie or Guiyang to the county followed by a taxi or scenic shuttle. Because the cave lies on the Guizhou plateau, the surrounding countryside of karst hills and farmland is also worth seeing on the approach.