Guyaju Caves - General Megacave for June 4th, 2022
Guyaju Caves (古崖居), also known as the Yanqing Ancient Cliff House, is a rock-cut complex of honeycomb caves carved into the slopes of the Tianhuang Mountain, near the village of Dongmenying in the Yanging District of China.
Local legend has it that the caves were built in the body of a dragon, and that a curious rock on one of the paths is a meteorite fallen from the sky. In the 1960s some of the caves at the foot of the valley were used to store weapons and ammunition. In 1976 the caves were damaged by an earthquake. As a result, some of outer rooms are visible in cross-section. [I assume this means what we can see now was once mostly enclosed?]
The site was first surveyed in 1984 by the Yanqing County Cultural Relics Management Office. [Some sources credit the surveryors for its 'discovery', which is contradicted by references to use in 1960s, unless the full scale of the site was previously unknown?]
In 1991, the Guyaju Caves officially started to receive visitors.
In 2013, the Guyaju Caves were registered as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, which administers cultural relics on behalf of the State Council of China. This designation is the highest level of cultural heritage protection registered in China.
Features
Guyaju is situated in the northern margin of the Yanqing-Fanshan Basin, a geological region comprising of 110-million-year-old granite that formed when magma intruded upwards through large amounts of diabase rock.
The site builders took advantage of exposed granite features to construct a complex network of 350 chambers cut into the rock face across a system of 117 caves. The chambers are mainly 1.8 metres in height and laid out in a rectangular or square plan that vary from single room dwellings to larger multi-room homesteads over multiple levels.
Many dwellings contain rock-cut furnishings: beds, lamp stands, storage compartments, stone tables, a stove and flue, and a kang – a simple domestic heating system commonly found across China. Chambers were interlinked with a network of vertical and horizontal passages, connecting the upper residential areas to the lower levels used to hold livestock and for stabling horses.
The largest and most complicated complex at Guyaju is called the Guantangzi (“Golden Temple”), a collection of 8 chambers divided over two floors. At the entrance is two ornately carved pillars that leads into a chamber used for communal gatherings or religious ceremonies.
History
Uncertainty persists about the builders of the Guyaju complex, its use, and when it fell into disuse.
There is no clear historical record of the group that built and used the site. Archaeologists have been unable to recover any surviving organic materials for reliable dating, nor are there any frescos or carvings in the cave system.
Some scholars suggest that the site was founded by the Kumo Xi, also called the Tatabi, a Mongolic steppe people that lived in the area from the Tang dynasty (618-907CE) to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907-979CE).
In this explanation, the site's association with outlaw rebels and banditry resulted in its eventual seige by armies of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty (916-1125CE), killing all of the inhabitants (said to be 1000 people).
The Kumo Xi did engage in several conflicts with Chinese dynasties and Khitan tribes, resulting in a series of disastrous defeats and the eventual collapse of Kumo Xi territory.
Other theories suggest that the complex may have served as a granary or a garrison for soldiers during the Tang dynasty period, or that it may even have been constructed in the earlier Han dynasty period (202BCE-220CE).
Sources
spoiler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyaju_Caves
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2022/05/the-guyaju-caves/143481
https://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/445/longqingxia-ice-festival-and-tang-dynasty-caves/
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Fucking hell... I have such a weird annoying problem.
There's this INCREDIBLE book I have on anatomy for artists. Its biggest flaw was that it was the kind of shitty paperback that falls apart if you crease the spine, which made it pretty hard to use while, you know, drawing. It's also frustratingly divided into 2 parts - all the written explanation stuff was the first half, while all the diagrams it referenced came after. So like, I'd be reading about thicc thighs on page 34 while the thighs themselves were on page 186.
So a year ago I decide to just rip the book apart - undo all the binding and such to try and organize the pages better (match the words and pics more or less) in a binder. It worked for like half of the book.
At a certain point, the book starts using every bit of space possible on each 9x12 page. It becomes impossible to continue trimming the edges or hole punching shit because then I lose a good chunk of information. I looked into larger binder sizes, but I'm not sure that would help because of how each page is laid out.
What makes all this worse is that for whatever reason, the book is impossible to find even heavily used these days for anywhere close to price I paid 2 years ago. This thing apparently dropped off the face of the Earth some time last year. So I can't even buy another copy if I fuck up or give up on this project. I can't express how much I hate feeling like I just ruined a perfectly good book and having no access to a replacement. :cri:
Could you scan it all then print it on new paper? Or just upload it as a PDF?
That’s probably the plan - some pages might still be too big for my scanner though
Library scanner! Libraries often have large format scanners, and maybe even large format printers.
That’d be a long library trip but it’s worth a try I guess
Pirate it
I can only find it in :france-cool: