luomei lotus cave tourism area. it is the gate tourism area of the geopark in leye, which is composed of luomei lotus cave, geological museum, longyang lake, heping polje, tongle polje, liuwei polje, heping subsurface river, jinying dong subsurface river and so on, of them luomei lotus cave and the geological museum are opened to the public. luomei lotus cave consists of upper dry passage and lower water passage; it features lots of cave lotuses, the most quantity and the biggest one in the world. the geological museum is a three-stories building, it displays specimen and pictures in the first floor, including the geosites panels of the geopark, specimen, geopark history, explanation of geosites characteristics, development and local culture and customs, and the geopark sand table model; it is the multimedia demo office in the second floor, in which it plays the landscape film of the geopark through modernized multimedia demonstration system, and non-periodical exhibition of geosites is held; it is the reception office in the third floor.

luomei lotus cave

the profile of luomeidong cave

the king of cave lotus with diameter of 9.4 meters

the columns

tongle polje

    tongle polje is a marginal polje in the contact zone between sandstone and limestone, extending along the leye-gantian-langping arcuate fault such that cliffs formed on both sides. tongle polje is 935-985m high asl, 4500m long and 500m wide in the n-s direction. it contains the county town and three isolated peaks. to the west of the polje there is fengcong karst of carboniferous-permian limestone while the landform to the east is sandstone.

    the the arcuate fault formed about 380 million years ago; after many movements over its long geological history it developed lots of fissures in the limestone. these fissures allowed allogenic water from the sandstone area to flow into the limestone, resulting in the development of tongle polje.

    it accepts pingzhai river in the upper reach of bailang underground river system in the south and flows into luomeidong at the foot of western fengcong karst.

liuwei polje

    liuwei polje is a marginal polje which slopes from north to south. it is 950-985m high asl, 4200m long in a n-s direction with a width of 250-550. to the north of liuwei polje there are mountains of lower-middle triassic sandstone, shale and mudstone. this produces large amounts of erosive allogenic water which was advantageous for the development of the polje in the limestone area.

    there are six villages in the polje and five caves in the fengcong, for example jinyindong cave is 5600m long in surveyed length. additionally there are several sinkholes in the south, where surface water sinks underground.

jinyingdong cave underground river system

    jinyindong underground river cave is a tributary of bailang underground river, with perennial water and 5595m of surveyed passage. the water flows from the northeast to the southwest with several branches. there are dry passages in both the upper and lower reaches, in which there is a large area of wall flowstone and calcite film as well as a few stalagmites.

    during the 12th  chinese-british cave expedition in 2002, a biologist discovered a new species of cave beetle, giraffaphaenops clarkei, in jinyindong’s “orient express” passage.

niuping polje

    niuping polje is 920~930m high asl, and extends 2300m in the n-s direction, a width of 100~200 m. it accepts water from niuping swallet after luomeidong swallet-longyang swallet in the south and surface water from xiagang polje, both confluences and sinks into underground at the foot of fengcong, and then it flows through a 3600 meters long niuping underground river, without any surface stream till the resurgence of 40 km away and finally to hongshuihe river.

    the polje floods 3-10 days each year because of the limited discharge capacity of the niuping underground river passage.