Shiyan Quarry
22°55'21.09"N, 112°58'47.08"E
(link: NA)
Location
Nanhai District, Foshan, Guangdong Province, China
Hours
TBD
Phone
TBD
It was a beautiful day when I traveled to Shiyan quarry on mount Xiqiao. It was hot, but I used the local bus and paced myself because I had a 45pound pack. I walked (or rather climbed) the 300m of mostly stairs from the bus stop to the entrance of the grottoes. It was mostly down stairs on the way in, but I knew I would be breathing and sweating hard on the way out. I arrived at the grottoes around 10am on Saturday. I was alone for about 20 minutes, but then came a light but steady trickle of visitors. Most staying for about 10-15 min. I think to justify the walk and a bit of hesitation for the return journey. I don’t think most would have stayed longer than 5 min if the walk back to the bus was easier.
I was planning on staying many hours, since this was my one chance to photograph and video the grottoes, even if it was a relatively small area that was open to the public.
There were still the info banners from the location competition, and a few stone tables for people to sit and have a drink. Although nothing had been down (that I could see) to the roof, the open area did seem a little safer. The area to the right was closed off and appeared to be a bit more dangerous with respect to falling rocks. That is the usual risk with these sites. The intermittent solitude was helpful in photographing and videoing the site, but it also made me stand out to the itinerant guard. Finally, after a few hours of seeing me photograph such a small space he approached and asked if I wanted to go down to the waters edge and look into the abyss. I said yes, so we waited for the current round of visors to leave and he unlocked the gates and we went down the twenty steps to waters edge.
We looked into the deep well and down the dark passages, but there wasn’t much more to see here than from the public platform.
After a few minutes I thanked him and we walked back up to the public area and he locked the gate behind us. I was appreciative, but he could sense I wasn’t too impressed. It didn’t take more than 30 minutes before he was back asking me if I wanted to see something really cool. I said yes. He told me to pack my things and to follow him because we needed to go before anyone saw us. The problem was that I had a lot of gear and it wasn’t easily crammed into my pack. However, I packed as quickly as I could and then just carried the rest and followed him about 100 meters down to a small passageway into the mountain that was clearly hewn by man. About 10m into the dark passage was an iron gate held shut by a chain and padlock.
The grottoes have been modeled