I only felt that the cave walls on both sides were narrowing continuously. In a while, I touched the iron chain railing by the road. The guide said we arrived at the "Cold Iron Chain Bridge". With the help of dim light, I could vaguely see that the mountain road ahead had broken, and instead there was a swaying suspension bridge made of iron chains and wooden boards. As soon as I stepped on it, my whole body started to sway continuously, and sweat beads immediately appeared on my forehead. Someone in front threw down a bottle of mineral water, and after a long time, the muffled echo of the water bottle hitting the ground came. The guide said that under the bridge was an abyss of ten thousand feet. Until now, I still don't understand how I, who suffers from acrophobia, crossed this cold iron chain bridge that day. I never expected that there would be an iron chain bridge in this Ziwēi Cave.
Similarly unexpected was the river in the cave. Judging from the water color illuminated by the wall lamps, this river must be very deep. Looking around, apart from the waterway, there was no other passage. We boarded a small boat and drifted on the river in the cave. There were no bamboo poles or oars; we relied entirely on the tourists pulling the ropes tied to the cave wall to move the boat forward. Where did the river come from? Where does it lead to? The guide said: "We conducted an experiment, releasing a marked duck into the river, and later found it in Chaohu Lake." However, we didn't follow the duck's trail but got ashore when appropriate and then walked out of the cave.
Sure enough, there were stalactites and soda straws again, and sure enough, there was a huge curtain made of stacked conch shells. Just as my mind was about to fall into the rut again, the cave suddenly opened up. Lifting my head, I suddenly saw two round vertical holes in the mountain body. Sunlight shone through the thick cave walls onto us, and we became frogs at the bottom of a well observing the sky. The tour guide said: "This is where Ziwēi Cave was discovered back then." It happened during the Anti-Japanese War period when several herbal farmers used ropes to explore the secret of the huge cave below. Later, when the people of Chaohu took refuge from the Japanese invaders, they used baskets to lower the refugees into the cave one by one, making the Japanese confused by the sudden disappearance of the Chinese. The vanguard team for the development of Ziwēi Cave tourism also entered the cave here, then cleared and dug through the entrance we just passed, and hired professional engineering teams to dig out the exit tunnel afterward.
Ziwēi Cave is known as the "Number One Cave North of the River", with a depth of 1.5 kilometers. When many familiar caves melted and faded in my memory, Ziwēi Cave left a deep impression on me, which should be credited to the two words "characteristics". From this perspective, "without characteristics, there is no landscape, and no tourism" is probably correct.
The original intention of coming to visit Chaohu in Anhui was for its "one of China's five major freshwater lakes" scenery. Who would have thought that upon arriving at Chaohu, I was directly driven by a friend to Ziwēi Mountain and plunged into Ziwēi Cave. To be honest, I had little interest in cave landscapes because over the years I had visited many caves and always felt they were all the same, mostly just stalactites illuminated by colored lights. What new features could this Ziwēi Cave possibly have?
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