However, he has opened a new window to deal with this problem: Since the Longyou Grottoes are such an extraordinary project, then it had to be a special endeavor in a special time and thus we cannot handle the problem and its reasonability with only common sense.

"There should be social demand. The builder must not be an ordinary person, and he had to be rich enough to dig dozens of huge grottoes. Then what were these grottoes built for? In the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770-256BC), the place belonged to the Yue State. And there was a social demand at the time. He might have come here to exercise his troops," said Yang.

A famous story goes that the Yue State Emperor once slept on the firewood and tasted the gall to remind him of the bitterness of losing the war after his state was occupied and he had been placed under arrest. During the ten years before he finally defeated his enemies, he encouraged procreation, extended the troops, and also trained them well under the nose of his enemies. Since all of these moves needed to be secretive, then it is plausible for him to have found a hidden place to train the troops.

Geologically, Longyou including its environment was a wide but sparsely populated area on the frontier, which might have brought much convenience for evading the authorities. The Phoenix Hill, with very thick forests, is very unfrequented. The cave mouths could hardly be found. While the mouths' location and the cave's vertical excavation might contradict the storehouse theory, those features turn out to be advantages if the grottoes were indeed secret drill grounds.

Yang's idea is very refreshing and imaginative. However, some problems still remain unanswered.

First, bronze wares were mostly used in the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476BC); steel wares had not yet become mature and popular. However, it would much harder to dig a single stone cave with bronze wares than with steel wares, let alone such a great number of the caves.

Second, the magnificence of the Longyou Grottoes was hailed as the acme of perfection. If the Yue State Emperor had the strength to build it, then why wouldn't he have had the power to defeat the enemy much earlier?

Third, the story of the Yue State Emperor is very well known in China for a long time. Then could such important part of the story simply be neglected?

(Author: Jeff)

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