八奇洞

Baqi Dong

Useful Information

Location:	Tanzhe Temple, Tanwang Road, Mentougou District, Beijing 102308. (39.8917802, 116.0212505)
Open:	All year daily 8:30-17:30, last entry 16:30. [2023]
Fee:	Adult CNY 54, Children (<1.2m) free, Students CNY 27, Military CNY 27, Seniors (60-65) CNY 27, Disabled free, Seniors (65+) free. [2023]
Classification:	Karst cave
Light:	Incandescent Electric Light System Coloured Light
Dimension:	T=16 ℃, A=240 m asl. VR=500 m. Largest Chamber: L=200 m, W=130 m, H=110 m.
Guided tours:	L=1,350 m, D=4 h.
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:
Address:	Baqi Dong, Tanzhe Temple, Tanwang Road, Mentougou District, Beijing 102308, Tel: +86-10-6086-3056.
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

Description

八奇洞 (Bā qí dòng, Baqi Cave) is a "scenic area", the Chines euphemism for team park. It offers the only 410 m underground high-speed slide in the world and the world's first underground cave wall cinema using the 100 m cave wall as a screen. Located only 25 km west of Beijing city center it is easily reached by millions of people and thus quite popular. But the interesting thing is, that the cave, which is part of the theme park, is definitely quite impressive. It is not only quite huge, it also contains the biggest cave chamber in China, which is 200 m long, 130 m wide and 110 m high. The high vertical wall was used to install a "wall cinema", the wall is used screen.

The cave is located in a temple area, and the grounds are full of temple buildings and Buddha statues. But some of them actually look more like modern art than actual religious symbols, for example a doorway which looks the negative of buddha cut into a rock slab. However, the actual Tanzong Temple is located 1.3 km to the north. Buddhism was first introduced to Yancheng in the Jin Dynasty. At this time, famous Buddhist were teaching in this area, and it soon became a center of Buddhism.

Like always the description of this cave is quite ridiculous. The cave is famous for its unique folds of "8" and eight wonders, so it is known as "the wonder of heaven and earth, the wonder of the cave"! And its one of the rare caves which have a constant temperatures. Really? The passages are huge but mostly devoid of speleothems. The artificial tunnel into the cave is a long staircase, and they built a slide in the tunnel, so its possible to slide down instead of walking.