Sanyou Cave, in the sheer cliff at the northern side of Xiling Gorge,10 kilometers away from Yichang, offers possible the best cave scenery in the Three Gorges area.
Sanyou means “three travelers” and the cave was so named because three most celebrated Tang Dynasty poets of Baijuyi, Baixingjian and Yuanzhen is believed to have visited it.
The inside of the cave is broad in the shape of an irregular rectangle. The cave is 30 meters in depth, 23 meters in width and 9 meters in height, and was formed by erosion of the underground water against the rocks. The rocks in the cave take a great variety of shapes. On the flat rock faces are inscriptions left by numerous ancient visitors, the themes of which are much pretty the same, praising the fantastic cave scenery. There are over 100 steles of inscriptions found in the cave rock face and 60 of them are well-preserved. The forms of these inscriptions range from regular script, clerical script, seal character, running script, cursive hand, covering all the developing stages of Chinese characters.
A small path leads from the cave entrance up to the Zhixin Pavilion, where travelers can gain a majesty scene of the mighty Yangtze River twisting among high mountains.
