There are 36 chambers surrounding a central hall and 26 stone pillars, known as "Sky Supporting Pillar", which are arranged in the shape of the Chinese character "品". Each pillar is more than ten meters high and nearly 10 meters in circumference. With stone landings, pools, bridges and stairs, these irregular, multilevel chambers still show the aesthetic values of the people who built the caves. Some of them still bear recognizably manmade decorations, forming a mystical labyrinth.

  Abundant Mysteries

Like Egypt's Pyramids, these grottoes are a puzzle. According to experts, 20,000 cubic meters of mud and rocks had to be cleared and more than 18,000 tons of water pumped out within a 12-day period. However, no one has yet found out where the rocks or stones had gone, thus eliciting various doubts and suspicions about these grottoes:

-Where are the rocks cleared out from the hills?
-Since the water level of the pools within the grotto is two meters higher than that of Xin'an River, where is the water source?
-Why are there no writing historical records concerning these grottoes, especially since the project is so huge in scale?
-As no echoes occur within such an enormous grotto as that of No. 35. So can this and other grottoes really had been designed by people living 1,700 years ago?
-How did the miners obtain lighting, as no lighting equipment is found？
-Who was the initiator of such a secretive project?
-Why were these huge grottoes built?

In face of so many mysteries, people have come up with various kinds of speculations. Some believe the grottoes were built as shelter for troops, while others believe they were food shelters. Then there are those who think they are part of an abandoned imperial mausoleum site, while yet others think they were stone quarries. If they were built for troop or food shelter, they were really safe.But how did the ancient people get rid of the dampness. If they were stone quarries, why didn't the ancient people do it in the open air? And how were the stones transported? All these questions remain unsolved, lingering in the minds of experts and visitors.

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