Legend has it that Ran Jin and Ran Pu also built Diaoyu City, and fought in the battle that finished off Mongke Khan. The two were purported to have perfected their martial arts skills in Tianyuan Cave as youngsters.

The lore surrounding the lives of the two Ran’s also extends to Tianyuan Cave itself. There is a hole in its ceiling; visitors must crane their necks high to see it. I did, and I could make out blue sky on the other side. My tour guide told me that never has there been any record of rain falling down through the hole into the cave – no matter what the weather has been like outside.

The legend of the hole is tied to that of the Ran brothers. One day in the cave their mother was tattooing their backs when lightning flashed, thunder shook the cave and a hole suddenly opened up in its ceiling, through which a ray of red light shone down onto the Ran brothers’ backs. It was a sign that a glorious destiny awaited the brothers; indeed, in thwarting the southern advance of the Mongols, their names live on for all of history.

Moving on from Tianyuan, I came to Tiansheng, a natural rock bridge. It’s 40 meters wide, 50 meters high and 60 meters long. The gigantic arc-shaped rock formation spans an old riverway. I looked around and saw no rocky mountains in immediate vicinity, and wondered how such a huge rock came to sit right above a river.

Out of all the sights in the Hongguoshu Scenic Area, the Shuilian (Water-curtain) Cave was a standout. Its name is fairly self-explanatory – a cave formed naturally behind a waterfall, which from the inside really did look like a curtain, only noisier. It was very cool inside the cave; the temperature disparity with the outside world can reach around 16 degrees centigrade.

Ducking back through the waterfall now, we walked up a narrow path on a neighboring hill until we had a bird’s-eye view of the spectacular waterfall, which is 26 meters wide and 36 meters high. It is not as large as some waterfalls in China, but it must be one of the prettiest.

Jiudaomen

The Jiudaomen parkland, Kuankuo River and Shuanghe cave complex form a triangle of scenic spots. Jiudaomen boasts clusters of karst limestone hills and contains the Wufengling, or Five Peaks Mountain, and Black Dragon Lake.

The landscape at Jiudaomen is eerily similar to that in Zhangjiajie, home to the UNESCO World Heritage Wulingyuan Scenic Area. Many of the names of peaks here are the same as those in Wulingyuan, so much so that it’s a little disorientating for tourists who have visited both.

Where Wulingyuan has the Five Fingers Peak, Jiudaomen has Five Peaks Mountain, Wufengling. It is near to Fengtoufeng – Phoenix Head Peak. Hundreds of different kinds of flowers are indigenous to the area, and springtime is polychromatic.

Close to Phoenix Head Peak are located – logically – Phoenix Wing Peak (Fengyifeng) and Phoenix Tail Peak (Fengweifeng). In the middle section of the “tail” is a crevice several meters wide, across which was built an iron suspension in 1876 during the reign of Qing Dynasty Empreror Guangxu. The bridge still stands today.

Heilong Lake took its name from a black dragon that, according to legend, once roamed the river valleys here. The river valley at Jiudaomen is only 10 meters wide. On either side are vertical cliff faces. I looked at one of the cliff faces a little closer. It was pockmarked with countless little holes, and surprisingly I also found mini-stalactites and stalagmites on the cliff face. Sheltered from the elements in these steep valleys, the kind of phenomena usually found deep underground were out in the open here.