The most beautiful sinkhole to be upgraded
Chanjiayan Sinkhole in Ningqiang County
The Demonstration Project of Luoshuidong State-level Geo-cultural Village located in Ningqiang County was officially launched. The preparation work for the project started in July, 2017. Initiated and organized by the China Geological Survey and the Shaanxi Institute of Geological Survey, the project is developed on the basis of the Sinkhole group in Didonghe village, Chanjiayan Town, which is deemed as “the most beautiful sinkhole in the world”. The Project aims to develop Luoshuidong village, the place where the Sinkhole group is located, into a new type of village that features geological relics, special agricultural products and folk customs, and integrates geological relics, special agriculture, culture, and tourism.
The view of the Chanjiayan Sinkhole in Ningqiang County
The Luoshuidong Geo-cultural Village in Ningqiang County is one of the three pilot geo-cultural village demonstration projects launched by China Geological Survey in 2018. It is an exploratory undertaking aimed to spread geo-culture and geo-stories, which is of great importance in promoting, protecting and inheriting the geological relics of the Sinkhole group in Didonghe Village.
The view of the underground river in Chanjiayan Sinkhole
The shape of the Chanjiayan Didonghe Sinkhole looks like half a gourd, with an area of about 120 square kilometers and a depth of nearly 300 meters. It boasts such geological relics as sinkholes, underground rivers, caves and canyons. There are 48 karst caves of various sizes, 3 underground rivers, with the longest one extending 4.6 kilometers in length. Waterfalls can be found too, with the largest one reaching 183 meters in height. Beautiful and colorful stalactites of various shapes can be spotted in the caves, including stunning stalagmites, stone curtains and stone waterfalls; vivid stone birds, stone beasts, stone monkeys and stone Buddhas; as well as crystal stone flowers, stone fruit, stone mushrooms and stone grapes that can make your mouth water. The Chanjiayan Sinkhole group is endowed with abundant protectable resources featuring typicality, rarity, ornamental value, and completeness. Furnished with functions and values conductive to scientific research, popular science teaching, scientific expedition, sightseeing, and leisure development, the Sinkhole group satisfies the standard of world-class geological relics. It is hailed as a “masterpiece created by the uncanny workmanship of nature” by geologists. Jean Bottazzi, an internationally famous potholer and secretary-general of the French Federation of Speleology, praises it as “the most beautiful sinkhole in the world”. In 2007, it won the “Award of Expert-recommended Distinctive View” in Shaanxi Geological Name Card Selection. Chanjiayan Town lies deep in the Daba Mountains, with an average elevation of 1,500 meters and a forest coverage rate of over 83%. In 2016, it was named the “Provincial Ecological Town” by the provincial government of Shaanxi Province as it is the best preserved town of Qiang culture in Shaanxi.
An aerial photo of the Chanjiayan Sinkhole
