This is the moment a tourist filming inside a vast cave discovers what at first appears to be a miniature model village but turns out to be a real rural settlement built on the cave floor.
The footage was recorded by a visitor hiking in the Sanmenhai scenic area near Fengshan County, Hechi City, in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, southern China, and was posted on Douyin - the Chinese version of TikTok on 5th March.
Video taken from the cave entrance shows what looks like tiny houses and small moving figures far below, giving the impression of a carefully constructed miniature landscape.
As the camera zooms in, it becomes clear that the buildings are real structures and the tiny figures are people walking along paths inside the cavern.
The scene was filmed from the entrance of Ma Wang Cave, which has a vertical opening measuring around 94 metres (308 feet) in height, roughly equivalent to a 30-storey building.
Sunlight enters through the large opening above and illuminates mist and rock formations inside the cave, making the structures and people below appear extremely small from this vantage point.
Video shows the settlement inside a cave in Hechi, China, undated. The video was posted on Douyin-the Chinese version of TikTok on Mar.05,2026. Note: Photo is a screenshot from the video (AsiaWire)
According to publicly available information about the site, the wooden buildings inside the cave mark the location of a former ordnance factory used by the 21st Division of the Red Seventh Army.
The cave forms part of the Sanmenhai Ecological Tourism Area, a karst landscape known for its chain of sinkholes and underground rivers.
The area contains seven connected natural skylight formations created by the underground river system and is recognised by the International Show Caves Association as the world’s only location where visitors can travel by boat through a series of karst sinkholes.
The cave and surrounding formations are part of a wider karst geological system featuring underground rivers, caverns and large natural openings in the rock.
(Aloysius Fernandes /Asiawire)