Exploring the Secrets of Swallow Cave
Swallow Cave on Bamian Mountain, famous as a hiding place for bandits, was rarely explored in the past because of its extremely steep and dangerous terrain. One day in late December 2006, together with Liao Jian, Huang Sheng, and Sun Bo from the "X-Files" production team of Hunan Politics and Law Channel, I made a special trip by car to Bamian Mountain and was able to glimpse the true face of Swallow Cave. In my imagination, Swallow Cave should be located below one of the peaks on Bamian Mountain. Only when I got there did I realize my imagination was wrong. Because the summit of Bamian Mountain...
The Yanzi Cave (Swallow Cave) on Bamian Mountain, once famous as a bandit hideout, was rarely explored in the past because of its extreme steepness. One day in late December 2006, together with Liao Jian, Huang Sheng, and Sun Bo from the "X-Files" production team of Hunan Politics and Law Channel, I made a special trip by car to Bamian Mountain and got a glimpse of the true face of Yanzi Cave.
In my imagination, Yanzi Cave should have been located beneath one of the peaks on Bamian Mountain. Only after arriving did I realize I had imagined it wrong. Because the top of Bamian Mountain is a mesa, Yanzi Cave is actually located several dozen meters lower than the summit, specifically among a cliff wall on the southeast side of Bamian Mountain. After the car reached the top of Bamian Mountain, we still had to drive about 10-plus kilometers to reach the mountain col near Yanzi Cave. After getting out and walking forward about several dozen meters, standing on a huge rock and looking down to the right, we could see four cave openings lined up in a row on the cliff face more than 100 meters away. It is said that on a certain section of the rock wall in the third cave, there is a naturally formed rock hollow shaped like a swallow's nest, and that is why these caves are all called Yanzi Cave.
Following a small path down from beside the huge rock at the summit for about 20 to 30 meters, then turning right, there is a narrow man-made trail. After going forward along this trail for several dozen meters, we reached the entrance of the first cave. This entrance has many grotesque rocks, and inside it is gloomy and deep. Between the first cave and the second and third caves, there are passages connecting them. The fourth cave is separated from the third cave and has the most precipitous terrain. On this trip we only looked at caves one, two, and three. Inside the caves there are sky ladders, rock barriers, as well as underground rivers and waterfalls. The interior area is very large, but we did not go deep inside to look.
Looking down from the cave entrance, there is a cliff standing sheer for tens of thousands of feet. Several thousand meters away below the mountain, one can faintly see a village with whitewashed walls. When the People's Liberation Army attacked Bamian Mountain that year, the regimental command post was once set up in that village. At that time, the famous Longshan armed leader Shi Xingzhou led a force of more than a thousand men entrenched on the top of Bamian Mountain, attempting to rely on the dangerous terrain of Yanzi Cave to fight the PLA to the end. But who would have thought that the PLA did not attack upward from below Yanzi Cave. Instead, they made a surprise ascent between the large and small rock gates, routed the enemy guarding the checkpoints such as the large and small rock gates, then maneuvered around to the southeast corner of the top of Bamian Mountain and, from the side and from a commanding height, sealed off the entrance of Yanzi Cave. The defenders inside Yanzi Cave were unable to resist for the moment, so they took advantage of the night to flee the cave entrance and scatter down the mountain. The next day, when the PLA fought their way into the cave, they discovered that all the defenders had already fled.
Although Yanzi Cave is known for its strategic danger, because the mountaintop on its flank simply could not be held, from the perspective of military defense this cave actually had no defensible advantage. Shi Xingzhou had not expected the PLA to fight their way up Bamian Mountain so quickly and occupy the mountaintop on Yanzi Cave's flank. Therefore, this also forced him to flee Bamian Mountain, and after hiding for several months, he ultimately took the path of surrendering his weapons and giving himself up.