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Explore the region
About Baojing Palace Cave
Baojing Palace Cave (宝晶宫) is a limestone cave in the Yanziyan Mountains (燕子岩山脉), 7.2 km southwest of the city of Yingde (英德) in Guangdong. Its chambers extend over more than 16,000 m², and it goes by the nickname "First Cave Heaven of Lingnan" (岭南第一洞天).
The cave came to light in August 1981, when a Guangdong provincial hydrogeology team (广东省水文地质二队) found it while prospecting for water-power resources. Its passages are stacked on four levels, and the site is rated a national AAAA tourist attraction.
Inside, the dripstone takes many forms: forests of stalagmites and columns, stone flowers, draped flowstone curtains and delicate stalactites. Individual formations resemble birds and beasts, figures from myth, or melons, fruit and vegetables.
The cave also has an archaeological side. In May 1996 archaeologists recovered stone tools shaped by human hands from an ancient river channel inside the cave. They were provisionally placed in the Paleolithic, about 100,000 years ago, which would make them as old as, or older than, the worked stones from the Maba Man (马坝人) site. Maba Man is a human fossil found in 1958 in a limestone cave at Shizi Mountain (狮子山) in Qujiang (曲江), Shaoguan (韶关), and is regarded as the earliest confirmed ancient human in southern China.
What to look for
- Karst chambers stacked on several levels in the Yanziyan Mountains
- Stalagmite forests and stone columns
- Stone flowers and curtain-like flowstone draperies
- Stalactites shaped like animals, mythical figures and fruit
Location & getting there
Getting to Baojing Palace Cave
- Search for 宝晶宫 with 清远市 and 英德市.
Find Baojing Palace Cave
宝晶宫 · 英德市
No reliable map pin yet: search by the Chinese name.
Sources & visit information
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-23. Opening hours, admission and access arrangements are not covered; confirm current visitor information with the site.
Some facts checked against Wikipedia contributors, "宝晶宫" · CC BY-SA 4.0.
Some facts checked against Wikipedia contributors, "马坝人" · CC BY-SA 4.0.