隐水洞

Yinshui Dong - Hidden Water Cave

Useful Information

Location:	Tongshan County, Xianning, Hubei 437642. 杭瑞高速 (Hangrui Expressway), Yinshuidong exit, 100 m to the car park, 5 minute walk to the cave entrance. (29.663711, 114.630421)
Open:	All year daily 8-16. [2025]
Fee:	Adults CNY 125. [2025]
Classification:	Karst Cave River Cave
Light:	Incandescent Coloured Light
Dimension:
Guided tours:	L=5,180 m.
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:
Address:	Yinshui Dong, Tongshan County, Xianning, Hubei 437642, Tel: +86-715-275-0888.
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

	Zhu Tingli, a scholar in the Ming Dynasty, visited the cave and left a hymn "Visiting the Hidden Water Cave".
2005	cave opened to the public.
2009	listed as a national AAAA-level tourist scenic area.
2011	National Geopark created.

Description

The tour through 隐水洞 (Yǐn shuǐ dòng, Hidden Water Cave), also Tongshan Hidden Water Cave, is more than 5 km long, which is actually too long to walk. The entrance of the cave is on the northern side of the hill, only 100 m from it own motorway exit. The cave entrance faces north, a 25 m wide and 2 m high portal under a 30-m-high vertical stone cliff, two streams flow into the cave. The huge river passage has an average height of 30 m and width of 25 m. After a short walk through the cave flat bottom boats are entered, and the visitors are boated one third of the way. After another short walk there is a trolley train, where the visitors glide through stalactites and stalagmites for the next third of the tour. This part of the cave is called the Maze. Finally, the last third is regular walking on well-prepared paths. The cave exit is located on the opposite side of the hill. We could not find any info on this, but we guess visitors are transported back to the entrance by bus. By the way, if you search on Google Maps you will probably find the exit of the cave, the entrance is in the north side of the hill.

The development was thus quite expensive, it was necessary to dig a tunnel, build a dam, railroad tracks, and of course the trails and electric light. The development cost CNY 10 Million which was about EUR 1 Million at that time. Actually that seems quite cheap to us, probably the prices for workers and material are quite cheap in China. The cave was developed by Tongshan County and Xianning City.

The cave is located in 湖北通山隐水洞地质公园 (Hubei Tongshan Hidden Water Cave Geological Park), the first geopark which was created in Hubei Province. It covers more or less the karstified limestone hills between the G56 motorway and S358 National Road. The mountainous area of Tongshan County in southern Hubei is known as the nuclear power capital of Hubei. We were not able to find out any speleological or geological fact about the cave except that it is a river cave, so we decided to list all the awards instead:

"Excellent Tourist Scenic Area in Hubei Province" by the People’s Government of Hubei Province.
"Civilized Tourist Scenic Area in Hubei Province" by the People’s Government of Hubei Province.
"Advanced Tourist Scenic Area in Hubei Province" by the Hubei Provincial Tourism Bureau.
"Top Ten New Tourist Scenic Areas in Lingxiu Hubei" by the Hubei Provincial Tourism Bureau.
"Health Demonstration Tourist Scenic Area in Hubei Province" by the Hubei Provincial Tourism Bureau.
"Advanced Health Unit in Hubei Province" by the Hubei Provincial Health Promotion Association.
"Red Flag Unit for Safety Production in Xianning City" by the People’s Government of Xianning City.
"Civilized Tourist Scenic Area in Xianning City" by the People’s Government of Xianning City.
"Most Popular Scenic Area" in the Hubei Quality Tourism Overall Evaluation List.
"Demonstration Unit" for the creation of tourism standardization in Xianning City by the CPC Xianning Municipal Committee and the People’s Government of Xianning City
"Advanced Unit in the Tourism Industry of Tongshan County" by the People’s Government of Tongshan County.
"Advanced Unit in Fire Safety" by the People’s Government of Tongshan County.
"scientific research and teaching base" by the Institute of Karst Geology of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences.
"popular science base" by the Cave Professional Committee of the Geological Society of China.
"Yinshuidong" trademark was confirmed as a "Famous Trademark in Hubei" by the Hubei Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce.

This is such an impressive heap of bullshit, we were completely baffled. There are adults who spend their life inventing such meaningless awards and actually feel great doing so. We are still not sure if it requires a sort of mental illness to do this work well. We actually had to shout "My brain hurts" after we simply copied this list from the Chinese governmental webpage. It is an invaluable mercy that foreign tourists do not understand the Chinese explanations.