Chinese for Cavers

Chinese, or actually Mandarin, is a language which is very baroque. Most terms are actually a description, which is biased by a certain amount of poetic hybris. The results are cave descriptions with sound like "70 different landscapes and 59 types of speleothems named yellow dragon, hanging balls, and two-color-waterfall". Also, there are often different terms used for the same thing while the same character is used for completely different things, which is determined by the context. Or by nothing at all. For example, the most important word for us is 洞 (dong, cave), but it is also used for temples, cave temples as well as wooden pagodas. We have no idea if caves are considered temples or temples are considered caves. Its even possible that the word is actually pronounced differently.

Chinese	Transliteration	English
洞, 洞穴	Dong, Dòngxué	cave
	Gong	virtually Palace, used for well-decorated dripstone caves
天生桥	Tiānshēngqiáo	natural bridge
礦, 矿山	Kuàng, Kuàngshān	mine
窞	Dàn	cave
洞穴探險	dòngxué tànxiǎn	caving
洞穴學	dòngxué xué	speleology
天坑	Tiān kēng	doline (used for dolines with more than 100 m depth and size)
滴水石洞	dīshuǐ shí dòng	dripstone cave
河洞, 伏流	hé dòng, Fúliú	river cave
洞穴沉積物	dòngxué chénjī wù	cave deposits, speleothems
熔岩管	róngyán guǎn	lava tube
石藤, 石枝	shí téng, shí zhī	helictite