Located in Sanmen Bay, Shepan Island is the second largest island in Taizhou, East China’s Zhejiang province. It is 17.5 km to the east of the county town’s Haiyou Town, only 2.5 km away from the nearest coastline. It takes about 20 minutes to reach the island by ferry from the Shang’ao Dock at Liuao Town. 

With a total area of 11.04 sq km, the island is a combination of two islands, Shepan Mountain and Xiaoshe Mountain before seawalls were built to enclose tidelands for cultivation in 1978. The island boasts a long history of exploitation with quarries set up in the late Song Dynasty (960-1279) that thrived in Emperor Wanli’s reign in the Ming Dynasty (1573-1619). 

The island was famous for the red building stones of Shepan Stone, most of which were supplied to building material dealers in Ningbo and Shanghai. The island is also called “island of a thousand caves” since there are 1,300 caves of various sizes left by the historical quarrying, a man-made wonder on the sea island in Zhejiang province.

Shepan Island [Photo/Xinhua new.cn]

Shepan Island [Photo/Xinhua new.cn]

Shepan Island [Photo/Xinhua new.cn]

With a population of about 4,000, Shepan Township is situated on the island. Most of the caves are found on Mount Dashe in various sizes and shapes, such as the spacious cave of more than 1,000- square meters and the small, deep, winding and seemingly bottomless caves which can only let one person in at a time. With mild temperatures, it is refreshing and cool in the caves with gentle breezes all year round. 

The well-known big caves include Huangni Cave, Shanqian Cave, Gaolou Rock Cave, Yanglan Chuanshan Cave and Shangshantou Rock Cave, which are comparable in attractiveness to the famous scenic spots such as the Keyan Rock in Shaoxing, Longyou Grottoes and Changyu Cave in Wenling. 

In Gaolou Rock Cave, there are two connected caves at the entrance with the size of two basketball courts, the branch caves are hard to find, a hole rises upward into the open air, and in the dark places there are five pools of about 10 meters deep with crystal-clear water. Yanglan Chuanshan Cave is a set of chain caves forming a passage to Shanhou Village. At the exit, a natural stone bridge appears and the vast sea waves in the east form a wonderland. Shepan Island is a pastoral tourist attraction on the sea.