Visiting
the site of Peking Man
II: Localities 4 and 15 and surroundings
Part II of our visit to the Peking Man begins with Locality 4, well removed from Locality 1.
Here is the entrance to Locality 4, a good-sized cave with only this one entrance. Kelly is standing just inside the cave. Note the opening in the rock just above the cave.
This is the view looking out of the cave at Locality 4. This site reminded me of an experimental underground home on Cape Cod that I had visited during the 1970s. Well, sort of reminded me!
The entrance to Locality 15, site of smaller caves. It was up on a hillside some distance from the other locations. Jokes about "country homes" were heard here.
Here is a small cave at one of the other localities. Playhouse for the Peking kids, maybe?
Here is a view of the town below, as seen from the general area of the upper localities. You can see how steep the hillsides are near the caves.
The view in the previous picture was to the south. This one is toward the east. It shows the multitude of small hills that dot the area. Note also the heavy regional haze, which is a sign of regional air pollution. Peking Man was lucky that he didn't have too look at this stuff!
Here is the southeast view from the same spot. In the distance, on the other side of Zhoukoudian, you can see two stacks with uncontrolled emissions. Multiply these stacks by hundreds of thousands, and you get today's widespread Asian haze. The view on this beautiful summer's day was wiped out by the haze.
Lower your eyes a bit at the same spot, and you see yet another cave.
Rapid differential erosion can produce isolated geological features like this.
I wasn't the only one of us taking pictures. Here's Kelly using her father's vintage camera while Guoshun enjoys the scene.
Jinghua was having a grand time, too, all decked out in her Calvin Klein cap and Hugo Boss shirt!
When I noted above that the parking lot was a quiet place on the other side of the tracks, I meant it. As we were preparing to leave the site, an engine backed several coal cars onto this siding and left them there while people swept the last bits of coal out of the near-empty cars. They seemed unconcerned that someone might want to enter leave the lot. (Peking Man wasn't getting any respect that day!) After fifteen minutes of waiting, we found an alternate way around the train by driving to the right.
After finding our way back to the highway, we turned southwest again, in search of an attractive river gorge. Here is a little restaurant along the way where we had some delicious soup noodles for lunch. Our afternoon activities in the gorge are described in the next file.