Cai Shanhai captures the life and leisure of China’s cave dwellers

尋找“走地仙”：溶洞里的別樣生活

張佳羽

In 2023， photographer Cai Shanhai began roaming through the countryside of southern China. He traveled through Hunan， Guizhou， and Guangxi， traversing a vast and famous landscape of stunning peaks—China’s 20-yuan note features the karst mountains of Guilin， Guangxi. The parts that attracted him most， though， were the natural caves that are an essential part of the locals’ daily life and spirituality.

Almost every village that Cai came across seemed to have a cave that people visited for leisure and entertainment. Locals use the caves to avoid the heat， square dance， and even go on dates. “The caves that I visited typically consist of four to five halls，” Cai tells TWOC. “For example， in one cave， there was a hall operating as a karaoke bar， with a smaller cave next to it serving as a place of worship for the [Daoist god] Queen Mother of the West. Further up， there was a much larger cave that you need a flashlight to explore. It was a grand scene of thousand-year-old stalactites.” Cai captured many of the caves on camera for his Zoudixian (literally， “Immortals Walking the Earth”) photography project.

In one cave Cai photographed near Liuzhou， Guangxi， local villagers could enter for free and spend the afternoon singing along to their favorite love songs as their echoes reverberated through the cavern. Another he visited was used as a wine cellar to ferment various local spirits because the inside was cool and humid. In a cave near Baise， Guangxi， Cai met a man in his late 30s who had been living and brewing sorghum liquor there for longer than he could remember. Cai shared the encounter on the social media platform Xiaohongshu in January: “He happily invited me for a drink and started dancing. Later he started to talk about tracking dragons in the mountains.”

Cai plans to snap the landscape in Shanxi， Shaanxi， and Gansu provinces next. The cave photos are just one part of his Zoudixian project， through which he aims to capture people who are spiritually adrift， the same way he imagines Daoists walked the land “seeking immortals (尋仙)” in ancient times. Cai says his cave photography also draws on another Daoist belief in “cave heavens (洞天)，” where people could achieve immortality. Perhaps through his lens， we can see how the spirits of the immortals coexist with the mortals of today.