The Water Moon Cave is located between the ‘elephant trunk’ and the ‘elephant legs’. 12000 years ago, the earth crust rose and the Lijiang River narrowed. That tiggered the formation of the Water Moon Cave. It is a round cave, which can be seen through, 17 meters long, 9.5 meters wide and 12 meters high. The total area of the cave is 150 square meters. As the bottom of the cave is under water, the cave changes its size following the rise and fall of water. The entrance of the cave faces towards the sun, and is called Chaoyang Dong in Chinese. The cave looks like a moon floating on the water. The image is very vivid so the name Water Moon Cave is still used today. “The water moon of Elephant Hill” is the famous scenery, depicted in many poems. The water moon and the moon rock on Chuan Hill enhance beauty of the area – one in the sky and another on the water. That forms the unique scenery known as the “two moons of Lijiang River”. In the cave, there used a pavilion named Chaoyang, built in Song Dynasty and renamed as Deyue pavilion (meaning ‘get the moon’) in Qing Dynasty. Unfortunately, it has been destroyed. On the wall of the cave, there are over 50 cliff stones carved with the essays of such famous ancient writers’ as Lu You, Fan Chengda and Zhang Xiaoxiang.
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