[Haichuan Chemical Industry Site] Chaoyang Cave in Liangdangyunping Tiankeng, Longnan, Gansu

1. Geographical location Chaoyangdong Tiankeng is located at the east end of Yuanshan Mountain with an altitude of 2043 meters. The entrance of the pit is located at an altitude of 1869 meters. The longitude and latitude are 106 degrees 23 minutes and 193 seconds east longitude and 33 degrees 42 minutes and 547 seconds north latitude. Between the edges of the pit floor, the distance between the southeast and northwest is about 200 meters in diameter. Around the bottom of the pit, the diameter is about 50 meters, and the vertical height is about 80 meters. The Chaoyang Cave entrance is 1,810 meters above sea level, with a straight height of 60 meters from the cave entrance to the pit entrance. The north-south distance is 13.825 meters, the height is 23.959 meters, and the east-west distance is 34.410 meters. Entering the deep pit from the steep slope from the west, the rocks are exposed on the slope, and you step on the slippery black mud. You slowly descend, with shrubs and some trees growing everywhere. Under the sky, there is a huge pit facing the sky, surrounded by peaks. Chaoyang Cave is actually a cave shaft, a huge karst funnel, and a typical karst topography. The Chaoyang Cave entrance is inclined downward at 34 degrees. It is an underground "skylight" where you can "sit in a well and look at the sky". Looking up at the blue sky, flowing clouds and sunshine is a unique experience. There is an underground river under the cave. The cave is in the shape of a slope, and the fallen rocks at the bottom of the slope are messy and dense, with different shapes and sizes. ； On the left side of the slope is a dry river bed. The surface of the sand is green and fluffy. The cave wall is shiny white with clear texture. The rock patterns are of strange colors, red and white, attached to the rock wall. Dots of small black butterflies, bats or flying squirrel excrement add some vitality to this huge cave.

Relics of the main places where the predecessors lived and worked were discovered at the 2nd, 10th, 12th and 13th terraces respectively.

In the cave where the second platform is located, there are three small and medium-sized shallow pits where ancient people mined saltpeter and boiled it. The soft sand is the waste residue left after smelting saltpeter. A stone kang built in an unknown year and month appears in front of you. There are withered grass scattered on the kang, and there are traces of smoke and fire on the cave wall. * * In the spacious place, the traces of the mountain people's labor in extracting saltpeter and boiling saltpeter can still be seen. As you walk further into the cave, it gets bigger and bigger. There are also some excavated ores piled under the cave wall, and there are some white crystals on the rock wall, which are columnar or diamond-shaped. The locals say this is saltpeter, also known as "fire saltpeter". * * , * * raw material ores.

The Thirteenth platform is located on a dam built by previous stonemen. According to analysis, it should be that the nitrate workers expanded their working space to facilitate the processing of ore. The rock walls in the cave are all blackened by gunpowder smoke. There are steps and tunnels cut into the rocks, and people crawl along the veins to extract the ore. There are ore pillars inside. This place not only has a long history, but also produces saltpeter on a large scale. The riverbed in the cave is made of calcite or quartz veins, and there are also artificial mining pits. Chaoyang Cave is from the second platform to the fifteenth platform in the cave. The area where saltpeter was once excavated is about one kilometer long from the last place we visited. Traces of previous people's saltpeter excavation and five saltpeter refining operating platforms totaling tens of thousands of square meters have been found intermittently. It is not difficult to find that the number of people making saltpeter in Chaoyang Cave could reach hundreds.

Historical data records: "Nitrate came out of Longdao", "Records of the Qing Dynasties and Sichuan Historical Materials" and other local historical records, related to the refining* * The records include the Chaoyang Cave in Laojun Mountain, Chonghua, Sichuan Province, which has the same place name as the two Chaoyang Cave in Yunping, and should be related. According to the records of "Gansu, Qinzhou, and Liangdang Counties" in Yan Ruyu, the prefect of Hanzhong in the Qing Dynasty, "Three Provinces Border Defense Preparation Volume 3 Road Test" (written in the second year of Daoguang, that is, 1822): “There are dozens of large and small places such as Changjiahe, Hongyanghe Log Factory, Houchai Factory, and there are also saltpetre and sulfur factories in dark places such as Huangpiao. ”All the above place names are located in Yunping and Guangjin, which are inaccessible, quiet and remote places. The nitrate sulfur factory was the processing and smelting site at that time. * * venue. According to 63-year-old Dai Kuiyi, the sixth generation descendant of the Dai family in Yunping, his family's ancestral home is Moziba, Hengyang Prefecture, Hunan, and they have been here for eight generations. The first generation is Dai Renrong, who runs wood factories, iron factories, nitrates and sulfur factories, charcoal and other businesses.

When Dai Renrong celebrated his mother Qu's birthday in the seventh year of Daoguang (1827), and when Dai Renrong celebrated his birthday in the twentieth year of Daoguang in the Qing Dynasty (1840), local gentry, civil and military officials* Members of the family came to congratulate them on their birthdays, and the old house, with its carved beams and painted buildings, is tall and majestic, enough to testify that the former owner had a prominent, prosperous, glorious and wealthy family in the mountainous areas of Yunping, Guangjin, Taishan in southern Liangdang County and Wafangba in Feng County. All of this is related to the mining, smelting and manufacturing of saltpeter. * * Not irrelevant.

Through inspection and comparative analysis, Chaoyang Cave has been mined at least several times on a large scale. The earliest mining may have been before the Ming Dynasty, and the largest mining can be traced back to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. According to the "Genealogy of the Wang Family" (Sanhuaitang) ① which was re-edited in the early Republic of China, the family surnamed Wang, an original resident of Yuanshantan, was given the title of "Wu Sheng" by the imperial court during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. In the early years of the Republic of China, he was promoted to "堠生" ③, which means scholar, and opened a school at home. The family surnamed Wang has lived in Yuanshan for ten generations and has flourished and prospered. Today, next to Yuanshantan Square, there is an old house of the Wang family. It has experienced hundreds of years of vicissitudes. Although it is now dilapidated, the prosperity of their ancestors can still be vaguely seen. From a chronological point of view, the Wang clan moved to Yuanshantan during the Kangxi period and became prosperous after the Qianlong period. From this analysis, it can be inferred that it is probably related to the opening of gold mines and the refining of saltpeter. * * It is estimated to have a history of more than 300 years.

Chaoyangdong saltpeter mining and processing were as recent as the 1940s. The author consulted "Republic of China Period Materials 4" (handwritten version on May 29, 1988). The materials examined by Liu Rui, the former director of the Liangdang County Chronicle Office from May 15 to May 28, 1988, recorded in the archives of the Tianshui City Public Security Bureau: "Gansu Province * * Express Telegram (Jiangong Weizi No. 1246): Magistrate Shi of Liangdang County, the Ganchuan Highway requires a large amount of fire salt, and I heard that the soil in Chaoyang Cave in the south of the county can be used to make salt, so I would like to inform you that it is less than one yuan per catty, please purchase in large quantities...

August 22, the 29th year of the Republic of China (1940). ”See also “The Chaoyang Cave Saltpeter Mine is now mined by the Yunping Temple Office in this county, with an output of about two kilograms each. November of the 31st year of the Republic of China (1942). ”This is what has been discovered so far about the saltpeter mining system in Chaoyang Cave. * * written records